10039046Wireless Bearing Condition MonitoringClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKMarine vessel operators have no way to conduct inspections on or "see" what is happening below the waterline of their ships without dive crews, underwater vehicles or bringing vessels into drydock for routine maintenance. These options are inefficient, expensive and potentially dangerous. Beyond the difficulty of maintaining optimal equipment performance and efficiency, there is also the responsibility to safeguard the environment. Most merchant fleet ships use sealed oil-lubricated bearings. Unfortunately, this brings about a risk of oil leaking from the propulsion system into the marine environment if the shaft seal becomes worn or damaged by foreign materials or during routine oil changes. Part of the issue facing operators is solved by Thordon's innovative open seawater-lubricated propeller shaft bearing system which permanently eliminates operational and accidental oil discharges from a vessel's propulsion system, as the system uses seawater as the lubricant, rather than oil. Thordon's Bearing Condition Monitoring (BCM) system helps ship owners meet Marine Classification Societies' requirements for extended shaft withdrawal periods for open seawater-lubricated shaft lines, making them technically equivalent to a sealed oil-lubricated shaft line. The wired BCM allows operators to monitor the wear of the bearings to proactively plan inspection and maintenance campaigns. Optimising the operational window of bearings boosts operational efficiency while reducing CO2 over the life of the vessel. However, today's remote monitoring of wear on bearings sealed within the stern tube is still an issue as there has been no reliable wireless communications system that can send real-time bearing sensor data from below the water through the water-air boundary to a topside receiver. Until now! The CSignum HydroFi modem facilitates the installation or retrofit of a wireless BCM system by eliminating the need, expense and operational downtime to run cable through the stern tube and the ship's hull. This novel wireless solution l helps ship owners lower costs, optimise equipment performance and achieve zero emissions below the water line, as per UN sustainable development goal \#14\. CSignum and Thordon's vision is to combine CSignum's wireless data transmission IP, with Thordon's BCM system, to create a unique wireless BCM solution. This will facilitate the digitisation of modern marine industries, safeguard the environment, and enable the less expensive retrofitting of the new BCM system into over 100,000 existing vessels in the global marine industry. A wireless BCM will enable a greater portion of the global marine fleet to utilise seawater-lubricated bearings to support net zero pollution.