This paper presents the origins of marine steam turbine application on liquefied natural gas carriers. An analysis of alternative propulsion plant trends has been made. The more efficient ones with marine diesel engines gradually began to replace the less efficient plants. However, because of many advantages of the steam turbine, further development research is in progress in order to achieve comparable thermal efficiency. Research has been carried out in order to achieve higher thermal efficiency throughout increasing operational parameters of superheated steam before the turbine unit; improving its efficiency to bring it nearer to the ideal Carnot cycle by applying a reheating system of steam and multi stage regenerative boiler feed water heating. Furthermore, heat losses of the system are reduced by: improving the design of turbine blades, application of turbine casing and bearing cooling, as well as reduction in steam flow resistance in pipe work and maneuvering valves. The article identifies waste energy sources using the energy balance of a steam turbine propulsion plant applied on the liquefied natural gas carrier which was made out basing on results of a passive operation experiment, using the measured and calculated values from behavioral equations for the zero-dimensional model. Thermodynamic functions of state of waste heat fluxes have been identified in terms of their capability to be converted into usable energy fluxes. Thus, new ways of increasing the efficiency of energy conversion of a steam turbine propulsion plant have been addressed.

The policy of sustainable development seeks to improve energy efficiency of industrial equipment. Efforts to improve energy efficiency also apply to the paint shops, where the recovery of waste heat is sought. The main source of a large amount of low-temperature waste heat in the paint shop is the spray booth. The second place where a large amount of low temperature waste heat is released is the room where the compressed air is prepared. Low energy efficiency of air compressors requires a large electric power supply. As a result, the emitted large heat fluxes become waste energy of the technological process. Heat is equivalent to up to 93% of the electric power supplied in the air compression process. There are solutions for recovering heat from compressors coming from the oil cooling water, but then the waste heat from the cooling of the compressed air and from the electric motor is released into air in the room. A method for recovering low-temperature waste heat from the air preparation room by means of an air-source heat pump has been proposed. An energy balance of the air compression and dehumidification process for the paint shop was made. A Matlab’s built-in numerical model includes air compressor and dehumidifier, heat recovery and accumulation for the purposes of use in the spray booth. A simulation experiment was carried out on the effectiveness of heat recovery from the air preparation room. The use of combined energy management in paint shops was proposed.

Maritime transport is facing a set of technical challenges due to implementation of ecological criterions on 1st Jan. 2020 and 2021 by the International Maritime Organization. The advantageous properties of natural gas (NG) as fuel in conjunction with dual-fuel (DF) internal combustion engines (ICE) potentially enables the fulfilment of all criterions. Moreover the 2020 global sulfur cap in combination with its low content in NG potentially enables to recover higher rates of waste heat and exergy of exhaust gas without the risk of low temperature corrosion. In this study the influence of sulfur content in NG and pilot fuel oil (PFO) on the sulfuric acid condensation temperature was investigated in order to determine the rate of waste heat (quantity) and exergy (quality) of four-stroke DF IC engine’s exhaust for 50%, 85% and 100% of engine load. Determined parameters were compared with two sets of reference values calculated for the same engine: a) fueled with NG and PFO with fixed minimum exhaust temperature set as 423.15 K, b) fueled with 3.5% sulfur mass fraction fuel oil only with variable minimum exhaust gas temperature. The results show that the assumption of case a) can lead to significant reduction of recovered rates of exhaust waste heat and exergy in the ranges of 10% to 24% and 43% to 57%, respectively. Higher values were obtained for case b) where the ranges of unrecovered rate of heat and exergy achieved 20% to 38% and 60% to 70%.