Currently there is no holistic solution for remote monitoring the operational status of a ship and applying conditional based maintenance applications to the maritime industry worldwide. The are some products and services offered by a small number of companies in Europe and in US to monitor specific and individual parts of the ship engines but no one has developed a complete platform such as the one proposed by the current project. The platform proposed will contain four major innovations that can be both stand alone products and platform’s elements, and will offer value added services to potential platform customers. One of them that we are involved concern advance optical sensors for ship fuel type detection, exhaust gas analysis and propeller shaft torche monitoring. Ship fuel is characterized by the sulfur content it contains, which is transformed to SO2 after combustion. By using laser based optical sensors, one can determind the type of fuel used and when it is used. The later is important as different enviromental restrictions apply, when ship is in harbor or in the open sea. The shaft torque measurement is equally important to know, as this, combined with fuel consuption measurements and ship's speed can determine operational efficiency.
