A study on the development of mixing clean heater

The owners of the fishing, working boats and similar kinds of vessels have been in difficult situations due to the rapid oil prices increase since the 1st and 2nd oil crises. As the price of the international crude oil holds 60-70 US dollars per barrel recently, the fishing and working boats have seen a big problem of no more sailings caused by the oil price increase. In view of this matter, You-Nam Marine Engineering Co. and KIMFT in Busan, Republic of Korea, jointly researched and developed the mixing clean heater as fuel oil pretreatment system that Bunker A or MF 30 grade oil could be used instead of marine diesel or gas oil. These days, marine gas oil is at least twice as expensive than Bunker-A oil. This system consists of an electric driven motor, shaft, propeller, friction plate and heating coil, also auxiliary parts such as 1st filter and 2nd magnetic filters etc. The advantages of this mixing clean heater are reducing the fuel oil sludge generation, increasing engine output power, reducing the trouble in moving parts for exhaust and intake valves, and also if we change the fuel oil converting marine gas oil or marine diesel oil to Bunker-A oil or MF 30 grade oil, direct or indirect fuel oil cost can be saved up to 35% ~ 50% for fishing boats or any kind of working boats. In this research, we developed the mixing clean heater as fuel oil pretreatment system that Bunker-A or MF 30 grade oil could be used instead of expensive marine diesel oil or marine gas oil used in low speed engines or medium speed engines. The mixing clean heater has functions such as fuel oil heating for appropriate viscosity, reducing the sludge, no carbon deposit on the heating coil and removing steel rust etc.