Assessment of Alternative Fuels from the Aspect of Shipboard Safety

Global regulations about shipboard emissions become stricter day by day. There are various ways to reduce shipboard emissions, and using alternative fuels on main engine and auxiliary engines is one of these ways. The alternative fuels can have different physicochemical properties than conventional fuels, which needs special procedures and safety precautions while using onboard. Safety is important term for sustainable shipping. This study aimed to determine the safety ranking of the trend alternative fuels and possible ones in the future. A safety evaluation method was formed to assess fourteen alternative fuels by considering handling, storage and crew health. Flashpoint, auto-ignition, explosion limits, flame speed, density, and exposure limit are criteria for the safety evaluation. Analytic Hierarchy Process was used while finding the weighing of the alternative fuels at these criteria. Scale of relative importance was used to find the pair-wise comparison of the fuels. The criteria weighing were determined by taking expert opinions. Seven experts gave points to the criteria at the asked questionnaire. The questionairre was about; which fuel property is more important at the storage, handling, and operation with the fuels. According to the final safety assessment results, liquefied petroleum gas had the highest weighing of 0,130. Ethanol and ammonia followed it with 0,120 and 0,116, respectively. Liquefied natural gas and methanol, as trend alternative fuels with liquefied natural gas for shipping industry, got 0,084 and 0,053, respectively.