steps to take if bunkers does not meet the quality requirements

The fuel quality parameters may be reliably determined by the testing laboratory only. Therefore it very important not to start using newly bunkered fuel until the lab test results received, especially, if there are any doubts about the bunker quality. Check more details on fuel fuel parameters

If testing laboratory confirmed the bad quality of the fuel, there are two options on how which the ship managing company may deal with the situation:

• debunker the bad fuel
• keep it for the vessel's consumption taking extra precautions and carrying out extra fuel treatment procedures

In the case of the last decision made to consume the fuel (most frequent case), there are some extra fuel handling procedures must be carried out by the ship crew:

• Proper draining of the Service and Settling tanks, more frequent draining than usual will be required
• Purifier feed rate reduced to the minimum to increase the effectiveness
• If more than one FO purifier available, run them in sequence, if possible. If not, run them in parallel at half of the minimum required feed rate
• Maintain purification temperature at 95-98 deg C
• Apply fuel treatment additives. Octomar BT 25 showed good results when dealing with bad fuels

Nowadays, the most frequently bad quality fuels quality indicated by high Catfines content. Check this question on how to deal with high catfines fuels.