First Stage Report of SEAFDEC-FAO Energy Audits

Abstract

All Thai commercial trawlers depend on diesel oil. To indentify techniques of saving fuel and reducing expense the first project on energy audit was developed under cooperative working among Food and Agriculture Organization for funding supporter and South East Asian Fisheries Development Centre/ Training Department for auditing operator. The audit process exposed to find conditional values concerning fuel consumption of trawl fishing vessels. Fuel consumption profiles of six trawlers were created for estimating their consumption rate at various engine revolutions. A method is to save fuel by reducing ship speed two knots contributing to decrease fuel consumption rate at 50 % of W. Yingcharoen and 52.3 % of Choknimitr. In addition to consideration of fuel consumption rate, earning per fuel consumption is also important parameter. The audit results reported that W. Yingcharoen trawler consumes the highest total fuel consumption but it has the better revenue per fuel consumption, 72.5 THB/litter. The ship fuel consumption results from energy audit project provide for fishers to understand for monitoring trawler at optimum level during fishing operation contributing to decrease fuel cost.