New Container Terminal Development for a Proposed Area

New Container Terminal Development for a Proposed Area Hasini A, Papa Rao G haasini.a@gmail.com, gprao_74@yahoo.co.in ABSTRACT: Container traffic has grown exponentially since 1980 and has become a reliable and efficient means of transportation of goods. In addition, worldwide containerization and the availability of cheap and frequent container transport to all corners of the world have had a profound influence on industrial production, transport and the environment. All these aspects result in increasing the pressure on container terminals to provide good service to shipping companies. It is of crucial importance to own a simple, cheap and easy to use method to estimate the dimensions of a container terminal yard based on different scenarios. The objective of this study is to develop an easy design method using some formulae for engineers to prepare concepts of terminal layout, and estimate the required areas of those concepts. These concepts can be used in design of a new container terminal. The container terminal design method is verified against three formerly performed projects. The validation showed good performance with justified differences compared to actual designed. Keywords: Container Terminal, Terminal Elements, Area, Functional Dimensions, Container Equipments. INTRODUCTION: Container terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. The transshipment may be between container ships and land vehicles, for example trains or trucks, in which case the terminal is described as a maritime container terminal. Alternatively the transshipment may be between land vehicles, typically between train and truck, in which case the terminal is described as an inland container terminal. Maritime container terminals tend to be part of a larger port, and the biggest maritime container terminals can be found situated around major harbours. Inland container terminals tend to be located in or near major cities, with good rail connections to maritime container terminals. Both maritime and inland container terminals usually provide storage facilities for both loaded and empty containers. Loaded containers are stored for relatively short periods, while waiting for onward transportation, while unloaded containers may be stored for longer periods awaiting their next use. Containers are normally stacked for storage, and the resulting stores are known as container stacks Adequate area is provided on the terminal for: Efficient container handling operations with world-class productivity Container and equipment storage Warehousing for stripping/stuffing operations Equipment maintenance, and utilities Gate operations and security Truck parking and turnaround areas Rail yard capable of handling double stack trains Administration and commercial offices Container ships are cargo ships that carry their entire load in trucksize intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport. There are two main types of dry cargo: bulk cargo and break bulk cargo. Bulk cargoes, like grain or coal, are transported unpackaged in the hull of the ship, generally in large volume. Break-bulk cargoes, on the other hand, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods. Shipping containers are usually made of steel, but other materials like aluminum, fiberglass or plywood are also used. They are designed to be entirely transferred to and from trains, trucks or trailers to and from a ship. There www.ijmca.org Page 123

are several types of containers and they are categorized according to their size and functions Layout of a Single-Berth Container Terminal STANDARD CONTAINERS OPENTOP CONTAINERS FLATRACK CONTAINERS FLATRACK COLLAPSIBLE CONTAINERS REEFER CONTAINERS HIGH CUBE CONTAINERS PLATFORM CONTAINERS A number of elements are essential to a terminal: 1. Quay wall 2. Apron 3. Storage Area 4. Landside traffic system 5. Buildings The quays are the interface between a ship and the land. Container vessels berth along the quay wall of the container terminal. Quay walls for container terminals do not necessarily differ from quay walls for other vessel types. The apron is an open area adjacent to the quay wall. The apron supports two functions: (1) an area for quay cranes to operate on and (2) an internal traffic circulation area for vehicles moving containers between the quay cranes and the storage area. The width of the apron varies from a minimum of about 40m to more than 100m and often depends on the width of the crane rail track and the type of horizontal waterside transport. In the storage yard import, export, empties and transshipment containers are kept for a certain period. For reefers and hazardous containers special areas with special equipment have to be considered. It also includes a special area for stripping and stuffing of cargo called Container Freight Station (CFS). Landside traffic system enables trucks to bring and collect containers at container exchange points. The trucks enter the landside area through the truck gate where administrative activities such as inspection and recording the physical condition of containers are carried out. The trucks then precede to the exchange points before exiting terminal. Note to avoid grid lock inside and on public roads outside the terminal, sufficient queuing space has to be included in the planning of the truck gate. Numbers of buildings are provided in a terminal for repair and maintenance of the equipment. Although, most of the maintenance activities are carried out outside the terminals, workshops on the terminals are unavoidable, since most of the equipment that operates in a terminal is too large to be moved to external workshops. In addition, every www.ijmca.org Page 124

terminal needs office buildings for management, staff facilities and supporting functions In addition to essential elements described above, a number of other elements may exist at a terminal such as: Rail Terminals Terminals Empty Container Depot Repair and Cleaning Facilities Barge Container The landside area consists of three basic parts as follows: Gate area Workshop and Service buildings Terminal offices The gate area consists of traffic lanes, parking area, reception building and terminal gate. able to transport a container in short distances very quickly and pile them in various rows depending on its access. There are also empty stackers that are used only for handling empty containers (10tonnes) A Rubber Tyred Gantry crane (RTG crane) is a mobile gantry crane used for stacking intermodal containers within the stacking areas of a container terminal. RTGs are used at container terminals and container storage yards to straddling multiple lanes of rail/road and container storage, or when maximum storage density in the container stack is desired. The maintenance and repair works of the equipment are carried out in workshops and service buildings. Ship to Shore crane systems is located in ports around the world in order to transport containers from ship on land or, vice versa, from land onto the ship. These crane systems are expected to handle clearly defined quantities within a prescribed time. A Reach Stacker is one of the most flexible handling solutions whether to operate a small terminal or a medium sized port. Reach stackers are As most of the container terminals in India are designed by the outsources, no information was found on what are the methodologies used for the design. Therefore some literature survey has done in order to find some methods for designing a new container terminal. Royal Haskoning Maritime Division (RHMD ) proposed a container terminal design in which some formulae are used to calculate the functional dimensions. This method comprised of Excel worksheets that based on existing empirical formulations that defines the dimensions of a terminal yard. This method of design is used in Hong Kong. In this project those formulae are used in calculation and comparison is done with existing terminals in India. Container terminal parameters, a journal prepared by Maritime department of transportation gives on how to decide the area for a new container terminal by considering the already existed terminals. In this method existing U.S terminals are taken and the median of all this www.ijmca.org Page 125

terminal s acre/berth is calculated which gives the area of new terminal. This method is implemented on Indian container terminals and the area of new container terminal is calculated. terminal is defined by the i) Length of berth required to service the vessels expected to call at the terminal, and ii) The area required to handle the cargo projected for the port. Methodologies Adopted For Designing A New Container Terminal: Estimation of Area Required for a 2-Berth Container Terminal: The size of a container Area Requirement: Survey of 8 Indian Container Terminals Port Berths Acres(hectares) Acres/Berth (hectares/berth) VCTPL 2 123.5 (49.9) 61.75 (24.95) JNPT 3 98.8 (39.9) 32.93 (13.3) ICTT Cochin 3 284.05 (114.9) 94.68 (38.3) CCT Chennai 3 88.426 (35.78) 29.47 (11.92) Mundra international 2 91.39 (36.98) 45.69 (18.49) container terminal MCIT Kolkata 2 11.263 (4.55) 5.63 (2.28) Kandla 2 98.8 (39.9) 49.4 (19.99) Tuticorin 1 24.7 (10) 24.7 (10) Median Acres Per Berth 40 acres (16.18) Estimate of area Required for a 2-Berth Non-Site Specific Container Terminal: Generic Container Terminal Specifications Berths 2 Median hectares per Berth 16.18 Alternative hectares per Berth 38.3 Buffer Zone hectares for 2 Berths 14 Total Median Berth area 46.36 Total Alternative Berth area 90.6 Using RHMD Method: Container terminal design is divided into design of waterside and landside areas. The waterside consists of a quay for serving vessels. The landside consists of a storage yard for stacking containers and a hinterland area for serving truck and trains Basic dimensions of workshops and stores www.ijmca.org Page 126

Buildings Width (m) Length (m) Area (m²) Reception 4 5 20 Customs office 3 4 12 Waiting area 4 5 20 Facilities 3 4 12 The office area depends on the number of personnel. These offices are used for management operations, vessel planning, and finance and custom administrations. Some assumptions based on David Adler (2008), consider for each staff member a required office space of 20 m². Formulae: Quay length: Important factors to determine the required quay length are service time and annual berth working hours. To calculate the service time, the number and productivity of cranes per berth, parcel size and number of calls are necessary. The service time can be calculated as follows: Total service time (hour/vessel) = (Un) loading time + (Un) mooring time 1) The following formula can be used to determine the (Un) loading time (Thorsen, 2010): (Un) loading time (hrs) = S p / (N c * Q cr * W ct ) S p : Parcel Size (TEU) N c : Number of cranes per vessel (-) Q cr : Crane productivity (TEU/hr) W ct : working crane time due to ship total berthing time varies between.65 and 1 2) Given the downtime factor and total working hours, the berth working hours per week can be calculated as follows: T bw = (1 - D t )*T d *N dw T bw : Berth working hours per week (hrs/week) D t : Downtime (%) T d : Working hours per day N dw : Number of working days per week (-) 3) The berth length requirement for loading and unloading a vessel is expressed as: L br = T s * N v * L b L br : Berth length requirement (hrs.m/week) T s : Total Service time (hrs/week) N v : Vessel arrival (No/week) L b : Berth use (Vessel length+ Berthing gap) (m) 4) To determine the sufficient quay length with a given berth occupancy, the following equation is used (Thorsen, 2010): L q = L br *P/ (T b *U berth ) L q : Quay length (m) L br : Berth length requirement (hrs.m/week) www.ijmca.org Page 127

P : Peak factor per week (%) T bw : Berth working hours per week 5) The number of berths can then be calculated as follows (Ligteringen,2009): N b = (L q - (Berthing Gap))/ (L v + Berthing Gap)* 1.1 N b : Number of berths L v : Average vessel length (m) L q : Quay length (m) 6) Storage yard capacity: In the presented package, the storage yard is divided into different stacks such as general, reefers and empty. The following formula is used to calculate the required storage yard capacity. S = C q (1-0.5*µ) C s = (S*t d *P)/365 S: Stack visits (TEU/yr) C q: Quay handling capacity (TEU/yr) t d : Average Dwell time (days) µ: Transshipment factor (-) 7) TEU ground slots can be calculated by dividing the storage yard capacity by the maximum stacking height. The following equation can be used to determine the number of TEU ground slots. RESULTS: N TGS = C s /h N TGS : Number of TEU ground slots h: stacking height (m) Comparison between Existing and calculated of the three terminals (VCTPL, MUNDRA, MUMBAI) VCTPL MUNDRA MUMBAI Existing Calculated Existing Calculated Existing Calculated No. of berths 2 2 2 2 2 2 Berth length 450m 476m 632m 643m 712m 718m No. of ground slots 2500teu 3095 teu 5880teu 6385teu 2862.5 teu 2968 teu No. of stacks Laden=4 Laden=5 Laden=5 Laden=5 Laden=6 Laden=6 www.ijmca.org Page 128

No. of equipment QC = 2 RTG=4 QC=2 RTG=4 QC=4 RTG=18 QC=6 RTG=18 QC =10 RTG=40 QC =8 RTG =40 Storage yard capacity 33000teu 40547.9teu 63200teu 66918.7teu 45000teu 46663teu Discussion of Results: All the inputs required in the formulae are collected and calculation is done for the three existing container terminals such as Visakhapatnam container terminal private limited (VCTPL), Mundra Container Terminal and Mumbai Container Terminal. Then the obtained are compared with the already existing to check whether the obtained are approximately equal to the existing or not. And the validation showed good performance with justified differences compared to actual designed. CONCLUSIONS: 1. The package is developed as a set of Excel worksheets as this platform is accessible, user friendliness and flexible. 2. The validation showed a relatively accurate comparison between the results of the calculated and the existing. 3. Existing Berth length of VCTPL is 450m and Calculated Berth length is 476m References: 1. Carl Thorsen. A, Port Designer`s Handbook, Second Edition, January 2010, pp 235-264 2. Cornell, Container Terminal Parameters A White Paper Prepared for: Maine Department of Transportation, January 30, 2007 3. Handbook of container terminal, General Considerations on Container Terminal Planning Institute of Maritime Logistics - Hamburg University of Technology, October 2010,pp 3-22 4. Ligteringen, Prof. Ir. H. Ligteringen, Port and Terminals, January 2009, pp 432-446 5. Royal Haskoning maritime Division, Guatemala New Container Terminal, December,2009 4. The berth length is taken more than the existing length so that larger vessels more than 400m can also be used for transportation and increase the business. 5. No. of Ground slots are taken more than the existing nos. considering the growth of container traffic and future needs. 6. Existing No. of ground slots of MUNDRA container terminal is 5880teu and Calculated no. of ground slots is 6385teu. 7. Storage yard capacity depends on the stack visits and quay handling capacity. www.ijmca.org Page 129