Container terminals today face many challenges – among them managing higher power consumption costs and the requirement to achieve ‘greener’ operations. Terminal congestion, noise abatement concerns, ship emissions and container handling equipment emissions are all factors in the frequent environmental permit delays that have slowed many terminal expansion projects.
The new GREENLINE™ family of spreaders from Bromma is designed to lower power consumption costs while advancing the environmental agenda of container terminals. As a Scandinavian company, Bromma has a history of environmental awareness, and Bromma R&D has for many years made engineering choices, in
part, based on environmental concerns. The new GREENLINE™ family now takes this bias toward environmental responsibility to a higher level.
Lighter weight
The GREENLINE™ family is, first of all, lighter than most comparable ship-to-shore and yard crane spreaders. This serves to reduce energy consumption by the container crane. In addition to environmental benefits, lower spreader weight has a significant economic impact as well. For example, the lighter weight of the
STS45E GREENLINE™ spreader should result in a crane power consumption savings of some US$4,000/year. Multiplied across a large terminal spreader fleet, such savings really add up.
All-electric
Secondly, the GREENLINE™ family is all-electric, eliminating the environmental risks and higher service expense associated with hydraulic spreaders. There is no oil to change, no possibility of oil leaks, and no risk of costly oil clean-ups. By eliminating hydraulics on the spreader, many routine service points have also been eliminated. Reducing service points means significant service-related lifetime cost savings. All-electric design lightens maintenance and enhances uptime in three important ways:
• Reduced scheduled service time, thereby increasing spreader uptime
• Lower service materials cost (for oil and filters)
• Reduced un-scheduled service time, due to the elimination of many of the ‘nuisance’ downtime events that occur due to spreader hydraulics (faulty hose connections, etc.)
Energy savings
The elimination of hydraulics in this all-electric spreader family, in addition to producing a much quieter spreader operation, also results in significant spreader energy savings. An all-electric spreader means that there is no constantly running hydraulics power pack. Indeed, terminals using Bromma all-electric spreaders report spreader power consumption savings of 85 per cent or more as compared to hydraulic spreaders.
For every five kWh consumed by an STS45 spreader, less than one kWh is consumed by a STS45E separating twin-lift ship-to-shore spreader. This means direct spreader energy consumption savings of US$1,100 or more per year. Multiplied across a large yard and ship-to-shore spreader fleet, this represents considerable savings.
