Tour d´EFFORTS

On 18. February in the morning I met Jean-Francois Emery, project leader technological development Monitoring of the Port of Le Havre Authority (PAH) in his office overlooking the port and the entrance of the port.

Main interests in EFFORTS

During our discussion Jean-Francois explained the main interest of the PAH in the EFFORTS project to me. They lie in the sub-project 1 „Ports and Environment“ of which it is the sub-project leader. This sub-project covers the following work-packages:

Power supply and air pollution

The problems of power supply to ships and air pollution they want to investigate whether this can be solved with filters on the exhaust pipes of the ships where the EFFORTS project partner Biowind has a technology it wants to develop further.

Noise

Noise is emitted especially from the cargo handling equipment in the Port of Le Havre, like the signalling sound of the straddle carriers. Here one solution might be to identify a sound frequency which can be heared in the vicinity of the carrier but is not heared further away in housing areas. But also lorries and trains emit a lot of noise the Port of Le Havre would like to reduce if economically viable solutions can be found.

Ballast water

An invisible but important problem are the mirco organisms that travel with the ballast water in ships for example from East Asia to Le Havre. These micro organisms can be dangerous for local species like oysters. Normally it is required that the ballast water is continiously changed during the ocean passage but only when at least 200 seamiles away from the next coast. This is never the case from Asia to Europe when coming through the Suez-Channel.
VTT and Ifremer have worked a lot in the EU-project MARTOB on solutions with modern environmentally friendly biocides that are put in the ballast water to kill the unwanted organisms and without damaging the steel of the ship. They want to finalise their research and the Port of Le Havre is of interested in the results.

Manoeuvering in ports

Besides that they have a special interest in the work package „Manoevering in ports“ of sub-project 2 „Navigation in Ports“ because the oil tankers which are hardly fit into the lock. There remains only very little space at the bow and the stern of the ship when once the ship is in the lock. This means stopping is a very crucial manoever as only the tug boat at the stern of the ship can help. I If the pilot had the exact position and distances the time for passing the lock could be shortened. The Portable Port Unit which is developed in the work package „Port ECDIS“ by Marimatech.

Passing berthed ships

Another problem they want to solve with the PPU is the follwoing: When a ship passes a berthed ship the passing ship has to be told to slow down because the berthed ship is set into motion along the quay. Especially when the mooring lines are tuned to low water, when they have to be long, but it is high tide now, they are longer. In this case the berthed can be moving quite much and eventually the mooring lines break. This can be avoided when the pilot is told about this situation and get´s the exact position of the berthed ship onto his PPU.

Port processes

The PAH has an interest in the results of sub-project 3 “Port processes” because PAH is reorganising itself. The government wants to privatise some parts of the port authority such as the cargo handling personnel. For this task they are interested to improve their knowledge, e.g. to make the best use of their port training centre.

Tour du Port du Havre

Following this extensive discussion Jean-Paul Raffini, the deputy head environmental manager of the Port of Le Havre joined us for lunch.

After lunch the two gentlemen took me on a tour through the port starting at the entrance with its distinctive tower of the harbour master.

We went on to the coal fired 2000 MW power plant

which is supplied with coal from the PAH owned and operated coal terminal.
At the container terminal “L´Atlantique” we saw the dutch tug boats in operation berthing a container ship.
At the multi bulk terminal we saw a 82000 t coal freighter being unloaded. With 12000 t per shift and three shifts per day this takes a little more than two days. The coal is stored and reloaded to barges, trains and lorries.
After that we went to the Pont de Normandie where we got a wonderful view over the natures reserve that had been created in order to compensate for the area needed for the

new container port. It is among the biggest nature reserves for birds in France.

Then we had to hurry up to catch my ferry which was leaving almost directly in front of Jean-Francois´ office.
When the ship left un-mooring and piloting could be seen in action.

The pilot boat bid farewell until the pilot went from board.

# posted by Jan Prahm @ 19:07