coupled with nuclear sources of heat, open great possibilities to
create new of the essence ship propulsive plants of different power.
A scheme of such SPI is depicted on fig. 2. This shaftless, engineless
installation includes polycanal magnetic-hydrodynamic generators (MHDG), shipmover (MHDM),
as a kind of propelling agent, pump (MHDP) and thermo-electric generators (ThEG). All
these components are built in the windows of quadrangular-section superconductive
electromagnet.
The source of energy is nuclear fast reactor with liquid metallic heat
agent in one or two circuit (the second one is boiling). The installation works by closed
Rankine's cycle. In MHDG heat and part of kinetic energy of ionized steam (plasma) of
monoatom liquid metallic heat carrier (agent), coming from fast reactor, is transformed
immediately into electric current, which is used in the MHDM for jet propulsion. After
MHDG ionized steam is condensed into liquid metal which is returned into reactor by MHDP.
MHDM is reversible with controllable inlet and outlet nozzles. The
reverse is realized by change of polarity of MHDM electrodes and position of the nozzles.
ThEG's are located between canals of MHDG walls immediately into direct
current, which is transformed into three-phase current for ship consumers by tirister
inventors.
There are some new ideas on the field of propulsive complex, in
particular propeller designs. Here we remind the results obtained with the CLT propellers
fitted to three 11 850 DWT old bulk carriers of a Spanish shipping company born in 1989.
They are sister ships built in 1974. There was the aim to rejuvenate these old ships and
reduce their operation costs during the last stage of their active life.
Among all existing possibilities, a change of their propellers was
chosen in principle as the easiest way to achieve that goal. The designers of the
so-called CLT propellers offered a reduction in FO consumption not lower than 12% at
constant speed, if CLT propellers were fitted to these ships. Additionally, they promised
to eliminate the cavitation erosion suffered by the existing propellers (Ptas 1 million
yearly per ship for repairing propeller blade erosions), as well as the highly bothering
hull vibrations felt at the afterpart of the ships.
The new CLT propellers were going to have a smaller diameter and a
lower weight, partly due to said smaller diameter and partly due to the elimination of the
Ice Class III reinforcement.
Finally, a decision was taken for retrofitting a CLT propeller to a
first ship, Guardo, with the hope to recover the corresponding investment in a couple of
years through the promised reduction in FO consumption.
