In order to contribute to the world's shipbuilding industry Japan is going to establish new vessel technology for the 21st century by overcoming technological issues through various technological development in light of improvement of highspeed and high reliability technology and response to environmental issues.
(1)Development Research of the Techno Super Liner
Development research of the Techno Super Liner is being conducted in response to various needs rising from recent changes in the economic social structure such as movement toward high-value added products and wide area development of production bases. This development research began in 1989 to realize a super high-speed vessel with superior resistance to rough sea travel, travelling at 50 knots, carrying loads of 1,000 tons, and can travel continuously for over 500 nautical miles.
Realization of this Techno Super Liner will contribute to the shift in domestic distribution from the saturated truck transport to transoceanic transport, and is expected to bring new development to Japanese economy. Internationally, transport from Japan to most of East-Asian countries would only take one or two days, trading activity with these areas is another expectance.
(2) Development Research of the High Reliability Vessel Propulsion Plant
Advance in energy-saving technology and the crudeness of fuel oil gives the tendency to need complicated maintenance. Given such situation, one of the basic issues to promote automation and laborsaving is to eliminate the necessity for vessel maintenance. Therefore, establishment of a significantly high reliability, as well as development research of the high reliability vessel propulsion plant for a vessel engine of the coming generation of ability improvements is being executed.
In response to the crudeness of fuel oil, this development research not only secures a high reliability six-month maintenance free system, but also aims to realize a vessel propulsion plant which is an improvement on current abilities such as heat-efficiency and power output efficiency.
(3) Development Research in Response to Environmental Issues
Due to the large-scale oil spill accidents by giant tankers such as the "Exxon Valdes", "Kurk V", and the "Blair", the development of technology to prevent oil spills from ships has become a world-wide high-priority issue. Japan is aggressive in its technology development activities to solve this problem, and contributes to shipbuilding industries over the world by broadly pronouncing the results. Within the total development research being executed to prevent oil spills due to tankers striking ground, is technology regarding vessel structures which basically make oil spills difficult, mechanisms which prevent spills even when oil tanks are ruptured, and in addition to development research of facility technology, test plans and appraisal tests of vessels using such technology.
Pollution of the earth's atmosphere by NOx, SOx, etc., is also a serious global issue, and with regards to the decrease of atmosphere contaminating substances from vessels, a technology quite different from that dealing with the problem on land is necessary as the issue must be dealt with on a very limited space upon a moving vessel.
Therefore, a total development research is being executed for the reduction and stabilization technology of the atmosphere contaminating substances NOx and SOx contained in exhaust gas from vessels.
