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As part of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action

Plan, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will add hybrid tug boats to their fleets in 2008. A hybrid propulsion system will be installed in Foss’ 23. 7 m Dolphin-class tugboat that externally will look like its conventionally powered sisters and will retain the Rolls-Royce azimuthing stern drives for propulsion.

Hybrid Tug Boat for
San Pedro Bay Ports

The Ports of Los Angeles (POLA) and Long Beach (POLB), the two largest container ports in the U.S., handle over 40% of all containerized cargo entering or leaving the U.S. Located in the South Coast Air Basin, the ports are major contributors to some of the nation’s poorest air quality.

Air quality should improve with the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan (see March 2006, D&GTW). Its goals include cutting diesel particulate matter emissions in half by 2011, as well as significantly reducing nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and other pollutants. Reduced diesel fuel consumption is an additional benefit.

Virtually every facet of operations at the two ports will be impacted by the plan. This includes cleaning up the emissions from the over 16 000 trucks that come into the ports, as well as the locomotives working within and traveling to and from the port. Also within five years, all cargo-handling equipment will be powered by the cleanest available alternative-fueled engines, most likely natural gas, or cleanest available diesel

Bill Siuru, PhD, PE, is a technical writer based in Temecula, California, U.S.A.

engines. Some will be all-electric, hybrid-electric or hydraulic-hybrid powered. All ships must reduce their speed to 12 knots and use low sulfur marine gas oil, initially out to a distance of 20 nautical miles and eventually out to 40 nautical miles.

By the second year of the plan, all harbor craft based at San Pedro Bay Ports will have to meet EPA Tier 2 emission requirements. By the fifth year, all previously repowered home-based craft will be retrofitted with the most effective NO_xand PM emissions reduction technologies. As cleaner Tier 3 diesel engines become available, the craft will be repowered.