Why Does Solid Cargo Turn Into A Liquid? - Liquefaction & Dynamic Separation Explained! 

Is it over the 10% TML?

i’d reckon is pretty close to 100%

I laughed at that way more than is reasonable

Wetter than a haddock's bathing costume.

Also, the Titanic's pools are still filled with water.

Reminds me of the States in the 2000s. Only a couple "independent financial rating firms". To increase sales they provided higher ratings than the competition. After losing bids, you'd get looser. And so on. After a decade of ever looser ratings ----------> CRASH.

That is true but in this case it also changes the value of the cargo, as the water is worthless, only the bauxite is wanted

Or the shipping company too. Waiting at port for the cargo to dry - or maybe waiting for better weather before loading? - eats away at profitability. Financial projections aren't met and exec.'s don't get their bonuses. I could definitely see home office telling the captain, implicitly via company culture, to just put down 10% in the form, don't worry about it, and get going so that we can make the delivery on time.

​@@jimmiller5600pppp

@@196cupcakeyes seeing “10%” is suspicious. A measurement might normally be 9.8% or something less even. Maybe when they see 11% they round down so its a mild lie. It seems procedurally if loading in the rain it should be expected to go up throughout the process and some extra step done. Perhaps heaters in the cargo could dry it with a hygrometer to know when its good enough. Maybe a condenser coil to recover the water to drink. Electricity is probably much cheaper than the value of the cargo lost

TML is a material property more than an administrative number. So all materials have a TML. Very interesting that there was no requirement to be below TML.

@@FekDindad-xy9vz No. TML is absolutely an administrative property. It is defined in the IMSBC code as, "the maximum moisture content of the cargo which is considered safe for carriage in ships not complying with the special provisions of subsection 7.3.2. It is determined by the test procedures, approved by a competent authority, such as those specified in paragraph 1 of appendix 2." A.k.a. you only need to worry about TML if your ship has not been specifically designed in a way to avoid the moisture content hazards. It is an administrative thing. Material property is the most important part of it, but there are other factors to be considered such as hold subdivision and nature of voyage. Source: Engineer on ships who regularly inspected cargo declarations (which contain the moisture content of the chartered cargoes) in a port which received bauxite.

​@@phantomsplit3491 Great comment, thanks!

@@phantomsplit3491 TML is important for more than just ships. Trucks trains conveyors all have a TML. It's a physical property of a material. Of course people write administrative limits around physical properties. But rule books don't change how a material liquefies. Notice how your quote says the administrative number is determined by a physical test. And as the case in the video shows TML exists even if there is no rule book. It was the physical property of the bauxite that determined when it liquified not adherence to regulation. Source. Engineer who dewaters bulk material for transport in more than just ships.

@@FekDindad-xy9vz A material's ability to undergo liquefaction due to entrained water is a material property. Defining a limit for this is administrative based off that material property and the type and duration of voyage. Congress or the IMO isn't going to change the melting point of raw copper, but they can pass legislation saying if you may be exposed to hot surfaces then you need PPE and safety procedures. It is an administrative control of a material property. TML is the same thing. It is an administrative control. Congress or the IMO can change what limit of moisture you are allowed to ship a raw bauxite at. If you ship bauxite ore 600 miles from Yucatan to New Orleans on a bulk carrier with non-divided cargo holds then there is a TML. If you take that same bauxite ore and put in some open hopper barges and transport it more than 1,000 miles upriver from New Orleans to Chicago then there is no TML. Same material, same material properties. But one has a transportable moisture limit, the other does not.

The Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand suffered liquefaction causing the majority of the damage and destruction. Whole suburbs were condemned and there is a ban on rebuilding them for at least 20yrs? This is aside from the city centre though where the actual earthquake did the destrution and death.

Also with earthen dams! If not properly engineered they can liquefy (typically due to a large moisture content, and ‘bad’ soil) during an earthquake. Potentially releasing all of the water it impounds at once!

The ground doesn't shake, it seems to move in waves.

Ruahihi is the name of the power station. Opened by then Prime Minister Sir Rob Muldoon, it collapsed THE FOLLOWING DAY.

​@@peterfinucane8122That's right. Had it collapsed a day earlier, who knows how many people would have died. We regularly travelled on that road it took out. Scary idea.

Moral of the story: Talk with the people who have known the ground for generations.

To save the googling i had to do. This is a list of the crew of the Bulk Jupiter. All hands were lost except one cook.

@@wolf06291980damn, why’s it always a cook? kitchen staff be something else

And anyone who has ever worked with the product will immediately see the difference between 10% and 20% moisture. One is a damp sand, the other is mud. That sinking was straight up criminal. People should be in gaol.

Seems like Kuantan Malaysia is the port where she loaded bauxite

Don't know about that. With corruption anything can go. South Korea is considered a developed country and yet the Sewol ferry disaster occurred. In part due to absolute corruption in South Korea commercial shipping.

At the time of the Bulk Jupiter accident, Bauxite was not known to be prone to liquefaction. The cargo was categorized as a Group A cargo following this accident.

​@@phantomsplit3491that's unbelievable. I've worked with bauxite and alumina residue dewatering and we had TMLs for both. Although that was with truck transport.

Also good to look up for earthquakes and various building collapse events. Part of the port of San Francisco is loose fill across a century and in one quake some of that fill went liquid under some buildings.

definitely check the Palu 2018 earthquake in Indonesia

@@billytanadi8303 I pulled one example of many. It was certainly not the worst in terms of damage or human lives lost.

Yes, but you lose cargo space and make loading and unloading more difficult. Some ships do have them.

With open barges you sometimes seem small seperation "walls" at the bottom of the cargo. Apparently a little bit of wall can be enough to avoid a lot of movement. They usually have to remove them when gravity unloading them at port.

They do this - add baffling - with liquid storage tanks. It's called the Free Surface Effect. If I remember correctly, the effect is proportional to the square of the free surface area. So dividing the space is quite effective at reducing the effect.

so yes there's a safer way but it costs more @@oaw117

I was thinking the same thing, it's just a vertical wall right? How can that cost so much cargo space that ship-builders don't add them? But then I realised how much force such a giant baffle would be under when one hold is empty and the other filled with thousands of tonnes of bulk cargo. A baffle like that would need to be so strong and heavy, it starts to make sense it's not worth it. You could make it much thinner if you only ever filled both holds equally but that would make loading and unloading a nightmare I guess.

Can you please explain why li-ion batterys are bad for planes?

Lithium fires bad, even worse on a plane

@@barklet6110They spontaneously combust.

@@barklet6110 If they catch on fire then you have an out of control fire at 30K feet. They are supposed to be located in a spot where if they ignite for whatever reason, the damage will be contained. The 747 that went down the pallet was placed directly under mission critical controls and the heat was so intense that it burned through the fire protection. Started melting flight controls and other systems and down we go. Li-ion in stacks is like charcoal briquettes. Light just one in a pile and in a few minutes you have a nice hot fire.

​​@@barklet6110 If lithium ion batteries start burning, it's a self-sustaining reaction. And it doesn't use oxygen. So any fire protection measures you might have, will not work (sprinklers, pumping in N2, gaining altitude so there's not enough O2, etc). Also, there's a LOT of energy stored in those batteries, and if all of it gets converted into heat (and rather fast), there's no way to vent it quickly enough, nor to sufficiently insulate key systems.

Whole vid on rice as a cargo. Similar problem.

The regular suspects: time and money.

money

This is allowed to be done instead of messing around with TML. But these subdivisions add so much time to the unloading and hold cleaning process that most ships find it better to eliminate the issue by transporting dry cargo, rather than mess around with the subdivisions. Plus the water in cargo = useless weight which hurts fuel economy on the ship and (depending on cargo density) can reduce the amount of product the ship can carry on a voyage.

money

that then limits what cargo you can load, and makes cargo operations difficult.

@@katelights Indeed, but prevents sinking by cargo displacement. What is more expensive, in the end?

@@wafikiri_ You know, it seems pretty dangerous for these ships to use combustible fuels like MGO. And boilers are practically bombs, looks at all the explosions in the 1800s. We should only allow ships to propel themselves via sail. The above is sarcasm if you can't tell. There are exemptions for ships to carry cargo over the TML if they have adequate baffles and bulkheads installed to mitigate free surface from shift and/or liquefaction. Most ships don't use these exemptions because they slow down unloading operations so tremendously. And make more places for dust and dirt to build up, making it hard for a crew to clean to make sure their next cargo is not contaminated by the previous one. Imagine you finish discharging coal, and are about to load rice. The more bulkheads and frames there are, the more stuff to clean to a food grade standard.

sadly, for lots of companies, the loss of an occasional vessel is deemed an acceptable risk in order to save money on outfitting their fleet with safety measures. They have insurance, after all @@wafikiri_

My guess is that they do have it but it cannot counteract the moisture from seeping in by normal means. Hence the "safe limit" restriction. The only thing the dehumidifying probably could do is slow down the process but not eliminate it entirely Edit: I also wanna add that it might also be possible that a dehumidifier is not feasible for a bulk cargo considering the size of the cargo. So it might also increase the cost significantly to add and operate a dehumidifier of that scale.

If its a 40,000t cargo at 10% moisture thats 4,000t of water. If youre criminally irresponsible and load 20% moisture then youre dehumidifying 8,000t of water.

Very good idea, unfortunately these companies only Care about time and money 🤑✌️

would baffles in the hold also be effective?

The cargo should (per international regulations) be dehumidified on shore prior to loading. Meaning a ship's dehumidifier would be unneeded weight. Slowing the ship down, costing extra fuel & maintenance. In the case of this ship it was loaded in violation of these rules, likely due to corruption & kick backs. Lest we forget; safety regulations are written in blood.

I hope he's doing ok.

Me too! 🙋🏻‍♂️

The issue is that it doesn't usually form as just a liquid, more of a slurry of fine particles suspended in the water that are more like a fine silt or slurry. Basically just really watery mud and pumping it out would damage pumps.

@@TIXLTIF makes sense, cheers

​@@TIXLTIFpumping slurry is very common. Not hard to do at all. But it requires slurry pumps and people who know what to do with them, which costs money.

@@elknackebroto7447 Why?

😂

Buoys have the same concept. Ever seen one upside down? No matter the weather, they stay upside up.

@@elknackebroto7447 Moving the centre of gravity or buoyancy higher or lower does not make it heavier or more buoyant. It just changes the location of the forces, not the magnitude.

@@RonakDhakan It *may* be possible to design a ship with a hull where this is possible. But the word "may" in that sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The center of gravity on a cargo ship like a bulker is a massively, massively changing value depending on whether the vessel is on a cargo voyage or a ballast voyage. How do you keep KB above KG when the vessel does not have cargo onboard? Also just think about what you are asking. Center of buoyancy is the center of the underwater portion of the hull. Center of gravity is the center of mass. If KB is to be greater than KG then this means your cargo all needs to be very low on the ship, and there needs to be a large part of the ship above this to provide buoyancy (depending on cargo density). This makes a ship have a greater depth, which means they cannot go into shallow ports. It means you cannot make effective use of a double bottom, since that brings down your KB with regards to KG.

No. The energy requirement is enormous, and drying bulk goods needs specialist equipment.

There are baffles and walls in place, effectively seperating the tanks into many smaller tanks that don't suffer from this problem too much.

they have many separate tanks so the liquids cant slosh around as much. also you can fill the tanks all the way to the top so they have no room to slosh about.

@@zockertwins Tankers do not have baffles in the cargo tanks. Too much of a pain to clean, and therefore old cargoes are able to contaminate future cargoes. They just have more tanks that are completely separated by longitudinal bulkheads to minimize the free surface effect. And once you get past a certain point, the more full a tank is the less effect that free surface has. So they load their tanks up all the way or not at all so that there is no free space for a fluid to slosh around in.

yeah, they're also loaded via pipe rather than via bucket @@katelights

This is allowed to be done instead of messing around with TML. But these subdivisions add so much time to the unloading and hold cleaning process that most ships find it better to eliminate the issue by transporting dry cargo, rather than mess around with the subdivisions. Plus the water in cargo = useless weight which hurts fuel economy on the ship and (depending on cargo density) can reduce the amount of product the ship can carry on a voyage.

money

Buoyancy above gravity means you have capsized

@@phantomsplit3491 maybe I am confused but I think it's the other way around

​@@rtarouca You _are_ confused :) Center of buoyancy results from the displaced water, so it can never be above the water line! Center of gravity is the entire ship, including all the bits that make it not-a-submarine (yet). So every ship will capsize when it keels over beyond a certain point.

@@MrNicoJac OK :). But let me explain my confusion. Buoyancy pulls up and gravity down. Looking from the bow, let's say boat leans to the right. The buoyancy moves to the right, the center of gravity stays in the same point. Is buoyancy is pulling the boat up and to the centre line, then it can be bellow the center of gravity. If you think of this as levers then we need to understand how these levers would work to level the ship and keep it stable. If you don't agree, let me know

😂

I bet it would be above 10%

Considering it's on the bottom of the ocean, I'd say the moisture content is pretty high.

@@WormBurger who would've thunk?

Which is why cargo hatches are often tested for watertight integrity. They have gaskets which are normally watertight seals by the nature of the weight of the cargo hatch weight pushing down on them. Then on top of this they have cleats which further secure the cargo hatches. And any moisture that does get by can then collect in gutters just inside the hatch seals, and drain from pockets at the front and back of the hold. If a cargo hatch fails catastrophically then you are looking at a flooding issue, not a TML issue.

There was one about grains doing the same thing that is a pretty similar video, maybe it is that one?

Chief Makoi did a video on the same subject, some time ago...

Different materials will have different moisture limits - such as "fat" clays

Because the subdivision greatly slows down loading and unloading. Since it is unloaded via a clamshell bucket. Putting a bulkhead down the middle of the hold slows down loading and unloading tremendously, and is unnecessary if you actually don't transport cargo above the TML.

@@phantomsplit3491 there are many types of buckets, some allow effecting unloading from 90 degrees upright spaces. And port equipment allows to change the buckets pretty quickly. The issue is that full costs/expenses analysis for both scenarios can produce different results for different situations, so my guess is that since the solution is not significantly better overall, there is no urge to implement it.

money!

Come on man , he looked fine lol😅

@@ashj_2088 Nobody said he wasn't. Gotta stick with either 2D or 3D, stop switching Ds on us.

what's the matter, are you so norwegian and antisocial that you can't handle seeing a face?

He said he did that as an experiment, but it didn't work out so he stopped doing it.

@@oslonorway547 switching dzss , sorry I didn't realise the seriousness of this overall sensitive situation , will c2 it the relevant action is taken 🥷💂🧟 🇭🇲😀