Alaska Marine Highway System
127.4 m RO-RO/Passenger Ferry
MV Columbia

PMC retro-fitted this vessel with our long established PMC electro-pneumatic twin screw propulsion control system. The system for the MV Columbia consists of three all electronic bridge stations, complete with electric shaft functions and Type PCH electrically driven control heads with pneumatic outputs located in the Engineer’s Operating Station. The Engineer’s Operating Station control heads produce the pneumatic signals for speed and pitch control. Fast, stable automatic load control is provided by PMC’s PCA-2LA pitch controllers.

Also used in the retro-fit is the powerful easy to use PMC INTEGRATED MACHINERY, ALARM and CONTROL SYSTEM, IMACS. The IMACS incorporates two independent  distributed control and monitoring systems and two ship's computers.

Each Omni Chief system consists of one local Omni Chief display panel and local collector and has a dedicated 96 point display showing the status of the optically isolated analog and digital field sensors. All alarm configuration changes (set points, time delays, etc.) can be accomplished from the Omni Chief display panels, as well as from the two ship’s computers.

Communication to the ship’s computers, located at the Engineer’s Operating Station, is over a high speed network. The PMC IMACS, a technically advanced Windows^TM based graphical user interface is installed on the computers, allowing the user to monitor machinery and perform trending.

The system automatically logs all machinery alarms for future reference and provides self diagnostic features. A total of 104 custom graphic pages and 28 pop-up windows allow the user to easily identify and monitor the over 200 machinery status points.

The graphic pages contained in the IMACS onboard the MV Columbia include:

• Propulsion control parameter screen, trending control signals such as load command, main engine speed setting, fuel rack position, pitch, etc.
• Operating parameter screens for each main engine, generator and the bow thruster.
• Individual cylinder exhaust gas temperature measurements for both main engines are reported on a comparison bar graph. Average and deviation alarms with independent high and low limits are calculated real time.
• Running hours and Start/Stop totals are shown on a single page for all major machinery.
• A data logging page was created to display all parameters monitored on a single text screen.

To complete the retro-fit, PMC designed and manufactured a new propulsion control console for the Engineer’s Operating Station, and flush mounting plates for the Bridge stations. All the PMC supplied controls and instrumentation as well as existing ship’s equipment were incorporated into the new propulsion control console and flush mounting plates.

Engine room console with integrated PMC IMACS and Type PCH electrically driven propulsion control heads with pneumatic output.

Pictures