Accelleron’s new ACCX300-L turbocharger series provides shipowners with a modular platform designed for greater energy efficiency, ease of servicing and the migration to carbon-neutral fuels.
Net-zero shipping depends on energy efficiency by 2030 and carbon-neutral fuels by 2050, driven by regulations and financial incentives. Accelleron’s ACCX300-L turbocharger series addresses shipowners’ needs for flexibility and future viability, featuring a compact, modular design adaptable to lower vessel speeds and ready for green methanol and ammonia.
Greater operational efficiency
Many ship operators use slow steaming to reduce emissions and comply with regulations like the IMO’s Carbon Intensity Indicator. This also helps shipowners lower costs when using expensive, carbon-neutral fuels. Engines and turbochargers must optimize efficiency across a wider range, and the ACCX300-L series is designed for turbocharger cut-out.
Cutting out one turbocharger at low engine loads increases air pressure, compression ratio, and firing pressure, improving efficiency and reducing fuel consumption. Accelleron’s FiTS2 system automates cut-out and cut-in via a control unit, optimizing fuel use while maintaining flexibility for full engine output.
Reduced operating expenses
The ACCX300-L series utilizes a platform approach to maximize modularity. Its easily exchangeable cartridge contains all rotating parts, enabling extraction and installation of the turbocharger core without dismantling the compressor or turbine sides. All casing connections are axially accessible within the turbocharger’s box volume once the air outlet is dismantled.The cartridge, including its transport packaging, fits on a standard shipping pallet.
This cartridge concept is especially valuable for cut-out operation. Turbochargers involved in cut-out have different utilization than those not involved, resulting in varying maintenance needs on the same vessel. The ACCX300-L turbocharger series leverages this cartridge concept, allowing vessel operators to address these maintenance requirements, with major service events possible during port stays as well as dry dock.
Instead of servicing turbochargers every five years, the ability to exchange cartridges in port means the full runtime between overhauls can be used, resulting in increased service intervals and lower operating costs.
Future fuel flexibility
Accelleron’s ACCX300-L series turbochargers feature an advanced turbine and compressor stage designed with increased specific flow capacity and higher pressure ratios. They deliver high efficiency at part and full load, up to a pressure ratio of 5.0, providing optimal turbocharging for a wide range of ship power configurations.
To meet higher engine power needs, Accelleron developed the TWIN concept—parallel combinations of smaller, lighter turbochargers in unconventional pairings of ACCX365-L and ACCX370-L models. This extends cartridge benefits to higher power engines, simplifies transportation and job duration, and enables more complex engine setups and turbocharger cut-out options.
Physical verification of the final product is key to achieving this next level of power density, so Accelleron’s qualification process has included thermos-mechanical integrity testing and performance checks and confirmation of reliability against high and low cycle fatigue.
Other testing has included analysis of the sealing air system and checks for non-uniformity of the inflow into the filter silencer. An investigation into the impact of ammonia-rich gases on turbocharger materials has also been undertaken.
