XBEE marine fuel cleaner in ABC Maritime cargo ships

ABC Marine tested the efficacy of XBEE marine fuel cleaner in their cargo ships.

ABC Maritime has been using XBEE onboard their ships since August 2012. It first started with the M/V San Beato. Primarily, they wanted to treat her Heavy Fuel Oil 380 after she encountered some issues with fuel quality.

In order to measure exactly how well it performed, they compared it to a standard marine fuel additive used in one of their sister ships, to see how it stacked up against XBEE marine fuel cleaner.

ABC Martime ship AdFines Sea using XBEE fuel

Comparison

In 2015, two vessels were monitored to compare the efficiency of a standard marine fuel additive to XBEE Enzyme Fuel Technology.

The chosen sister ships were the M/V AdFines Sea & Star. Both of these chemical tankers have the same basic specs. Mak 7M43C main engines of 6,300 kW at 500 RPM, powered by Heavy Fuel Oil 380.

Results

First, the technical department monitored several parameters, including the cleanliness of tanks, separators, filters, and more. They compiled the data into an easy-to-read table.

Effectiveness of XBEE Marine Fuel Cleaner

The table below clearly illustrates that although the initial state of cleanliness of the AdFines Sea was worse than the Star, the former saw far better results. They found noticeable differences with XBEE onboard ships:

  • sludge reduced remarkably by 25% in the bunker tanks, and 33% in the settling tank
  • separators became cleaner
  • automatic cleaning improved by a factor of 3.46 compared to the marine fuel additive
  • manual cleaning improved by a factor of 4.4 with XBEE fuel
  • turbocharger cleaning improved by a factor of 3.27
TanksMaritime Fuel AdditiveXBEE Enzyme Fuel Technology
→ Sludge bunker tanksN/A-25%
→ Sludge settling tankN/A-33.00%
Fuel oil separator
→ Disc stack conditionUnchanged (3)Better (3 to 2)
→ Bowl conditionBetter (4 to 3)Better (3 to 2)
Automatic fine filter before main engine
→ Manual back flashBetter (sometimes to never)Better (sometimes to never)
→ Candle conditionWorse (2 to 4 to 3)Better (3 to 1)
Lube oil separator
→ Automatic cleaning frequencyWorse (150 to 90 minutes)Better (50 to 90 minutes)
→ Manual cleaningWorse (1,500 to 750 hours)Better (300 to 720 hours)
→ Disc stack conditionWorse (3 to 4)Better (3 to 2)
→ Bowl conditionWorse (3 to 4)Better (3 to 2)
Turbo charger
→ Turbine side wet cleaning frequencyUnchanged (250 hours)Better (150 to 490 hours)
Waste heat boiler
- Type of depositsBetter (3 to 2)Better (2 to 1)

As a result of the noticeable improvement after the first use, the company then decided to start using XBEE marine fuel cleaner onboard their ships long-term. This time, they chose to use it for another one of their ships, the M/V AdFines Sea, in order to evaluate the capacity of the enzyme technology and clean up the whole fuel system.

ABC Maritime

Nyon, Switzerland