The lifeblood of the Ship is Bunker fuel or Marine fuel. Testing of marine bunker fuel not only helps vessel owners/managers meet regulatory compliance with respect to marine bunker fuel but ascertaining its quality by thoroughly testing is of crucial importance to global shipping. The impact of contaminated bunker fuel would jeopardise the ship’s safety, cause environmental issues and the ship's performance would also deteriorate. Hence Bunker fuel analysis helps prevent expensive engine failure, downtime and costly repair.
Atlas Lab tests and analysis bunker fuel to ensure if it conforms with respect to the Bunker fuel quality in accordance with ISO 8217, Marpol Annex VI, IMO guidelines, SOX EmissionControl Areas (ECA), Port State Control requirements. The various bunker fuels tested by Atlas Lab are VLSFO (Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil), HFO 180 cSt (Heavy Fuel Oil), HFO 380 cSt (Heavy Fuel Oil), HFHSD (High Flash High Speed Diesel), LSHSD (Low Sulphur High Speed Diesel), HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil), MGO (Marine Gas Oil), MDO (Marine Diesel Oil) and the various tests conducted for bunker fuel are Density @ 15 deg. C, Flash Point, Carbon Residue, Total Sulphur, Total Sediment, Total Acid Number Etc.
By using Atlas Lab to routinely check the physical and chemical characteristics and test and analyse the condition of your Bunker Fuels and Marine Oils, you receive a valuable and comprehensive report on the condition of the Bunker Fuel and the operating health of their machinery. We ensure sample collection, shipping, testing and reporting is quick, efficient and cost-effective. Atlas Lab provides strong service to various shipping, marine and oil and gas companies throughout the world.
We provide an end to end service from the collection of samples from any major port, ship the sample to our state of the art lab, the quick turnaround time for testing of samples which is usually between 12 to 24 hours from the receipt of the sample and swift receipt of test report which is delivered over email. We can provide and supply bunker fuel sampling kits which includes sample bottles, labels and sample holding boxes which are inexpensive easy-to-use kits for the collection of your bunker fuel samples.
While most people talk about machinery problems related to inferior quality of the fuel, there is a much more important factor, the safety of human lives.
As most bunker fuels are a secondary fuel or residual fuel which is a leftover fuel or a by product during the refining process its quality has to be tested and monitored for its quality.
The new era of Bunker Fuels with reduction of Sulfur from 3.5 % to less than 0.5 % as per the introduction and guidelines of IMO 2020, new marine fuels are produced which were not there formally. These fuels are from blends of different cutter stock due to increased usage and blending of new fuels and therefore their quality varies to a large extent.
Problems also occur in Distillate Fuels, mainly high cold filter plugging point (CFPP) / pour point / cloud point, high total acid number causing acidic wear to the machinery, bacterial contamination causing filter plugging, low lubricity causing heating of machine parts.