During manoeuvring, pilot complained about significant amount of sparks flying out of the funnel.
What is the cause of sudden sparks emission and how to avoid such situation?
Sparks usually appear after sudden increase of load on Main Engine or Auxiliary Engines. Spark emission indicate that exhaust gases of high temperature ignited unburnt fuel remains which accumulate inside exhaust trunk, Exhaust Gas boiler and silencers.
Unburnt fuel remains usually accumulate when engines are running on partial loads for a prolonged period of time, when using poor quality fuel or exhaust gas boiler (economizer) water washing been neglected.
Preventive measures include:
- regular soot-blow of Exh. Gas boiler. Do not forget to soot-blow prior End of sea passage
- regular water washing of Exh. Gas boiler
- reducing time of running on partial loads. Do not keep online more generators than required. If charter or operations request to run ME on ECO speed, remember to increase the load up to at least 75% for approximately 1 hour so accumulated deposits may burn
- inspect Aux. Engine silencers (if installed). In some bad cases they were found almost choked. This decreases engine efficiency and creates the risk of fire at the same time. Clean or renew silencers if found fouled .
