With the costly consequences of fuel wastage, malfunctioning equipment, or broken parts, it’s no surprise that ship owners want their vessels to be as efficient as possible.

To successfully do this, ship performance needs to be carefully monitored. 

The Kyma Performance Systems – Kyma Shaft Power Meter, Kyma Delfini, and Kyma Ship Performance – are tools used to collect and monitor vessel data, allowing owners to use this information to save costs by maximizing the efficiency of their ships. With Kyma’s 25 years of experience, the company has created an accurate and functional device to accommodate marine data needs. Currently, they have over 7000 systems on sailing vessels.

By summarising all the collected data on an LCD screen, owners can easily understand the condition of their vessel as well as the issues present. Additionally, Kyma states that the systems are “maintenance free and designed for the vessel’s life time”, facing “no mechanical wear” even in “hazardous areas”.

The systems are compatible with existing vessel hardware. 

Out of the three performance systems available, the Kyma Shaft Power Meter offers basic features whereas the Kyma Ship Performance has the most advanced capabilities.

Kyma Shaft Power Meter

After a one-time installation of an aluminum ring onto a vessel’s shaft, the Kyma Shaft Power Meter is ready for data collection.

The system, designed for monitoring propulsion power, measures torque, vessel power, revolutions per minute (RPM), total energy power, total revolutions, and thrust (option available). The values displayed for torque, thrust, revolution, and power have an absolute accuracy of <0.5%, <5.0%, <0.1%, and <0.5% and a relative accuracy of <0.5%, <2.0%, <0.1%, and <0.5% respectively.

These displayed data points can be used in many helpful ways including:

• Reducing fuel consumption by allowing ship owners and crew to identify inefficient propellers
• Comparing the propulsion performance of a vessel to its expected design performance 
• Quantifying the impact of services on a vessel’s hull and/or propeller
• Detecting vessel components facing overload stress, thus increasing their longevity and avoiding disastrous breakdowns. 

The system can also produce reports on data deviations and performance (PDF output option available).

Kyma Delfini

In addition to receiving propeller shaft data like the Kyma Shaft Power Meter, Kyma Delfini receives data from “fuel oil flowmeters, speed logs, alarm monitoring systems, bridge instruments, etc” along with data entered by users. This information from the datalogger is connected to the display unit, which also connects to the cloud for easy storage and access.

Besides the propellor shaft data, the new data avenues allow for the screen output of fuel consumption by type, total fuel consumption, speed over the ground/speed through water (SOG/STW), main engine specific fuel oil consumption¹ (SFOC), main engine percent maximum continuous rating² (%MCR), propulsion efficiency, fuel efficiency, CO2 + SOx emissions, trim³, and propeller slip⁴.

Unlike the Kyma Shaft Power Meter, the Kyma Delfini also includes daily and voyage reports (can be exported in Excel format), historical data presentation, data storage, other key performance indicators (such as those listed above), data exports, and a Kyma online/API subscription. It can also handle 40 real time inputs at a time, displayed in both numerical and graphical formats, as opposed to the 4 that the Kyma Shaft Power Meter can process. 

Instead of just allowing for the analysis of propeller shaft oriented data, the Kyma Delfini can help accomplish tasks such as caching engine fuel leaks, minimizing the environmental impact of each voyage, and understanding the usage of different types of fuel. 

All these tools help ship owners and crew get a more extensive idea of the general health and performance of their vessel, enabling them to make more cost saving, efficient, and effective choices.

Kyma Ship Performance

The Kyma Ship Performance builds on the features of the Kyma Delfini. This system helps measure overall vessel performance by automatically comparing the “actual condition” to “the design ship condition in real time”. 

Some of its other additional features include a diagnostic toolbox option which analyzes vessel data and clearly indicates issues to the ship owner and crew, performance trials, energy efficient operational indicator (EEOI) calculations, and long trend diagnostics. Moreover, this software also has the capability to interface with any system onboard and can take up to 500 real time inputs.

This advanced system not only collects and handles more data but also analyzes this data itself, unlike the Kyma Shaft Power Meter and Kyma Defini, thus saving the manual data handling time needed and eliminating human error during data monitoring.

About the author

GIANTECH Engineering is the authorised sales and service agent in Singapore representing various original equipment manufacturers such as Kyma AS.

Find out more at: https://www.igiantech.com/services/shaft-power-meter/

Written in collaboration with Sjur Clementsen, Sales Manager at Kyma A.S. You can reach him at [email protected]

Do you require more information or assistance? You can contact Justin Si at [email protected] 
Note: This article provides general information only and does not represent formal advice or the positions of any equipment maker.