Indian Navy to Get Upgraded Fuel HFHSD – IN 512

One of the Key Result Area for Indi­an Navy has been fuel qual­i­ty stan­dards revi­sion to keep pace with induc­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy equip­ment and meet con­tem­po­rary emis­sion stan­dards. With the advent of tech­nol­o­gy and refin­ing tech­niques in the petro­le­um indus­try bet­ter qual­i­ty of fuel abid­ing to more strin­gent spec­i­fi­ca­tions has become a neces­si­ty. Hence, con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion for diesels is the pri­ma­ry focus area.

Lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and improved refin­ing tech­niques avail­able with the country’s petro­le­um indus­try, the Indi­an Navy in col­lab­o­ra­tion with M/s IOCL car­ried out an exten­sive and thor­ough study and a com­par­a­tive eval­u­a­tion of exist­ing inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions (ISO, MARPOL, NATO etc). As an out­come, a revised tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion was arrived at con­sist­ing of 22 test para­me­ters includ­ing crit­i­cal para­me­ters cetane num­ber, flash point, sul­phur con­tent, sed­i­ment con­tent, oxi­da­tion sta­bil­i­ty and Cold Fil­ter Plug­ging Point (CFPP). The new spec­i­fi­ca­tion will not only ensure a bet­ter qual­i­ty fuel but also result in a reduced car­bon footprint.

M/s IOCL, post upgra­da­tion of the refin­ery units, ini­ti­at­ed lim­it­ed sup­ply of the prod­uct to Indi­an Navy plat­forms fol­low­ing which rig­or­ous machin­ery per­for­mance checks and accep­tance tri­als were car­ried out. Dis­tinct improve­ments in fuel qual­i­ty were observed. Giv­en the pos­i­tive results, the new fuel was there­fore decid­ed for pan Navy imple­men­ta­tion. On 13 Jan­u­ary 2020, the launch of the new fuel (High Flash High Speed Diesel) HFHSD – IN 512, with revised tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions was undertaken.

With this, the coun­try will be able to ensure inter­op­er­abil­i­ty amongst for­eign navies dur­ing fleet exer­cis­es and pro­vide fuel of qual­i­ty bet­ter than that man­dat­ed to all for­eign navies under bilateral/ mul­ti-nation­al logis­tics sup­port pacts includ­ing LEMOA (Logis­tics Exchange Mem­o­ran­dum of Agreement).

Suc­cess­ful intro­duc­tion of the new fuel is a land­mark occa­sion high­light­ing the enor­mous poten­tial which exists with­in the coun­try to pro­duce world class prod­ucts. This effort would also ben­e­fit oth­er M/s IOCL con­sumers in the coun­try like Indi­an Coast Guard and oth­er mer­chant marine in the com­ing years. The achieve­ment would also mark a new high with qual­i­ty fuel avail­able to all for­eign Navy ships at Indi­an ports dur­ing exer­cis­es with the Indi­an Navy.

This rev­o­lu­tion­ary ini­tia­tive would go a long way in enhanc­ing equip­ment reli­a­bil­i­ty, per­for­mance, reduced car­bon foot­print, emis­sions and more impor­tant­ly would be key enabler in the Navy’s ‘Mis­sion Based Deploy­ment’ on a glob­al scale.

Source:

Press Infor­ma­tion Bureau
Gov­ern­ment of India