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There is no doubt that bill of lading is the most important aspect of commercial
shipping. In my view the close second is the sampling of the cargo.
Just as we need to be watchful for bill of ladings, we need to be equally concerned
about sampling procedures we adopt.
As per Swedish club, cargo contamination is the current major issue for
chemical and product tankers. It would not be wrong to say that it is most costly
type of claim too.
The cost of cargo carried on board chemical tankers is sometimes more than the
value of ship itself. And as such if the cargo is off spec at discharge port, it could
be a disastrous situation.
If the cargo is off spec during loading, there are two main sources for it.
Contamination before the manifold valve and contamination after the manifold
valves.
Our job is to ensure is that there is no chance of contamination after the manifold.
There can be many reason for cargo contamination after the manifold. This may
include but not limited to
1) remains of previous cargo in the cargo lines
But even when the contamination is on the shore side, the onus to prove same is
always on the ship. Valid samples is the only way to prove that the contamination
was not because of ship.
Now what do we mean by Valid samples ? Valid sample is a cargo sample which
Sample locations
There are four samples a ship may have to take depending upon the nature of the
cargo.
Manifold sample
Shippers never allow ship staff to do shore tank sampling. As such manifold
samples are the nearest possible proof to show the condition of the shore cargo.
As manifold is the first point for cargo to enter into the ship system, any
contamination after this is considered to be because of ship. This makes the
manifold sampling the most important one.
We take manifold sample with the manifold valve closed. The sampling need to be
witnessed by the shipper surveyor. What we need to check in this sample depends
upon the cleaning requirements of the tank for this cargo.
For cargo requiring visual inspection, we check this sample for any visual
impurities, water content and color of the cargo. If the cargo requires wall wash
sampling of tanks, apart from checking the sample visually, we need to do the wall
wash test of sample.
As a minimum we need to check the manifold sample for HC and Chloride tests.
If the visual or wall wash test of the manifold sample fails, vessel must not open
the manifold valve. The cargo surveyor will most likely drain some cargo into the
drums. After draining, we need to take the manifold sample again. We can only
open the manifold valve when the sample looks OK.
The final manifold sample then need to be sealed in presence of cargo surveyor.
We need to put appropriate sticker on the manifold sample. The sticker need to
have all the information and must be signed by cargo surveyor.
Some terminal may not allow the sampling with the closed manifold valve. This
may be because of terminal regulations or because of type of pump they have. For
example we cannot close the manifold valve if the shore pump is of positive
displacement type.
In this case we can take a running sample of manifold and then lodge a protest to
the terminal for not allowing manifold sample.
Pump Stack Samples
Pump stack sample is important while loading wall wash cargoes. We do not want
the cargo in the tank to fail because of dirty cargo lines. And even in the event of
cargo failure, we need to be sure that it was not because of cargo lines.
To avoid this, we must take the sample from near to the point where cargo enters
into the tank. This drain is before the drop valve but the sample can also be taken
from the drain before the discharge valve.
Again we need to check the pump stack sample in the same way we checked
manifold samples.
In case sample do not pass, we need to follow same procedure we followed for
manifold samples. That is we need to drain some cargo into empty drums and draw
the samples again.
We must only open the drop valve when the pump stack sample passes.
First foot Sample
First foot sample is taken for sensitive cargoes like methanol, Ethanol and MEG
etc. But why do we need first foot sample.
To understand the importance of first foot sample, lets assume that we are loading
into a tank.
The tank specifications are length 15 meters, width 15 meters and height 15
meters. The volume of this tank will be 3375 m3 (L x B x H).
If you calculate the total surface area of the tank and volume of the tanks, you
would find these values (I leave the maths up to you..)
Now Calculate surface area covered by 1 foot of the cargo and volume of 1 foot of
cargo. You would find these values
As you can see, with only 2 % cargo loaded, it can cover 32% of the cargo tank
area. Any contamination because of dirty tank surface should show up in 1 foot of
cargo. This avoids the bigger claims if cargo is damaged after loading into the
cargo tank.
Also during tank cleaning all the impurities gravitate to the bottom. So the upper
part of tank is always better cleaned than lower part.
So it is a fact that if first foot sample is pass, the final sample after loading will
pass.
After tank has one foot of cargo, cargo loading is stopped. Manifold valve, drop
valve and discharge valve are closed. We then start the pump and collect the
sample from the first available drain on the cargo line.
The sample is then sent for lab analysis. Only when Lab analysis passes, further
loading can be resumed.
In case first foot analysis fails, ship staff should proceed as following
1) Inform owners / Charterers immediately,
2) Do re sampling of the first foot. Make sure that the sample bottle is clean and
there is no other source of contamination such as dirty hands.
3) If the second analysis also fails, call P&I representative after consulting
owners/ship managers.
This off spec first foot cargo would then be required to unload. If there is
difference between the specs of manifold sample and first foot sample, the owners
has to bear the costs of the cargo as well as delays.
Failure of first foot is a difficult situation for the ship staff to be in and the only
way to avoid it is by having a tank that is cleaned to the required standards.
If sampling from pump stack drain, cargo must be recirculated for few minutes
before sampling.
Vessel must not commence the cargo operation until the analysis has passed.
If sample analysis fails, we must inform the owners/Charterers. At the same
time, we must request the surveyor to take the sample again. In this case,
recirculate the cargo for few more minutes before taking the samples.
If the sample fails again, local representative of the P&I club should be contacted.
It is important that vessel has the load port samples witnessed by the attending
cargo surveyor at the load port. These samples would be the only defense vessel
will have in case of off spec cargo at discharge port.
In all cases of cargo claims, you must not hand over any samples to anyone
without consultation with P&I surveyor.
There have been many instances where vessel did not have any cargo samples from
load port. And as such, owners had to pay a huge amount of money for the cargo
loss even when cargo did not damage on ship.
This is common when the shipper has loaded a cargo which has different
specification to what receiver was expecting. In this case, even when lab analysis
result will be same as load port, but receiver will fail the test. Because they are
testing with different values as reference. To avoid claims in this situation, Load
port samples are the only defense for owners.
Sampling procedures
It is not enough to take the required cargo samples before loading and discharging.
The samples are of no value if these do not represent the actual cargo the vessel is
loading.
For example, of what use the samples will be if these were taken into a dirty
sample bottle. Or into a bottle which had traces of water inside.
So how to ensure that samples drawn are true representation of the cargo on board
?
Cleanliness
Each element of the sampling process must be clean to such an extent that it does
not contaminate the sample. For example, the sample bottle must be clean, dry and
free of moisture. One way to ensure that is by rinsing the clean sample bottle with
small quantity of cargo itself.
Apart from the sample bottle, hands of the persons involved can contaminate the
sample. People involved in the sampling process must wear clean latex gloves
while sampling.
Sampling environment
Sampling must not be carried in rain and dusty environment. If vessel cannot avoid
that, we must ensure that no rain drop or dust goes into the sample.
Sampling methods
There are three methods we can take cargo samples. So lets see what each method
of sampling is
Open Sampling
Open sampling is done with tank dome open. Open sampling is very common with
cargoes such as palm oil. In this, a small container which is tied with a rope is
lowered into the tank from the tank dome to collect the sample.
Restricted Sampling
Restricted sampling allows the sampling in closed environment but with small
exposure to cargo and its vapors.
There are different makes that provide restricted samplers. One of such is MMC
restricted sampler. This sampler is attached to the same vapour lock from where
ullages are taken.
The sampler has a bottle attached at the bottom. This bottle has a ball which moves
up when it touches the cargo and allows the bottle to fill with cargo.
There is no exposure with the cargo or its vapours up to the point when sampler is
removed from the vapour lock. After that we need to transfer the sample from
MMC sampler bottle to the sample bottle. This is done by manual dumping of the
sample.
Closed Sampling
There are number of closed samplers in the market. And each of these are made in
view of achieving one target which is no exposure to liquid of vapors while
sampling.
This is important while sampling toxic cargoes. One example of the closed sampler
is this one from MMC.
As we can see that we get the sample in the MMC sampling bottle just like
restricted sampling. The difference between restricted sampler and closed sampler
lies in how we transfer the sample into our sample bottle.
1) after drawing the sample, we bring the sampler tape in stowed position.
2) Close the vapor lock valve
3) Lower the tape so that sample bottle is resting on the vapour lock ball. This will
release the sample from the MMC sample bottle.
5) open sample transfer valve to collect the sample. The sample will flow into the
bottle by gravity.
6) heave the sampler tape and open the vapour lock. This will release any left over
of sample into the tank.
7) Close the vapour lock and remove the sampler and store it after cleaning.
For taking the samples of a cargo which react with air/moisture, we can even purge
the sampler. To purge, we can connect the nitrogen bottle (supplied by maker) to
the sampler transfer valve. After purging the sampler,we can lower the sampler to
collect the sample.
We can easily correspond the gauging methods to the sampling methods. So as per
IBC code chapter 17, if a cargo has the open gauging mentioned, we can do open
sampling for this cargo. Same way, if a cargo has closed gauging as per chapter 17,
we need to do closed sampling for this cargo.
To know this, open chapter 17 of the IBC code and look for your cargo. Now look
under column J for the method of gauging required. O, R and C represents
open, restricted and closed respectively.
Use of PPE during any operation on ships can never be over emphasized. Each
company has a PPE Matrix for each activity each crew member must follow.
Additionally for Sampling on chemical tankers, we must wear full chemical suit
and SCBA when handling toxic cargoes.
IBC chapter 17 identifies if a cargo is toxic or not. To know if a cargo is toxic or
not, look at the column K of the chapter 17 cargo list. alphabet T represents that
the cargo is toxic. In all the cargoes with T in this column, full chemical suit
with SCBA must be worn during sampling.
Storing samples
We must label each sample with all the possible data and then store these samples
in designated compartment only.
1) Date of sample
4) port
5) Signatures
1) Vessel need to have a sample locker situated in the main cargo area (IBC
16.5.1).
2) Sample locker to have cells to keep the bottles and to avoid shifting in the
rolling (IBC 16.5.2.1)
5) Uncompatible samples should not be stowed close to each other. For example
Acids and caustic sample should have a vertical separation in the sample locker.
6) Samples which are not required should be disposed and not kept unnecessarily.
Sample Disposal
The sample disposal policy reflects the time frame in which receivers can make
a cargo claim.
As per the industry practices, no claim for cargo damage be made after six months
of date of discharge. So most of the companys policy allows sample disposal after
six months from discharge date.
But this is not the case with toxic cargo samples and samples of polymerising
cargoes. Most of the companies allow disposal of these samples after discharge
operation or maximum 1 month after discharge operation.
Some companies have a procedure to seek permission from the claims department
before disposing any sample. In this case, ship staff need to send a request for
allowing to dispose a sample. In this request the exact details of the sample (such
as sample date, port and voyage number) need to be sent.
1) Disposal ashore
Vessel can land the samples ashore. Even though this is not a viable option as no
one accepts the ships cargo sample. But in any case, if possible we can consider
this sometimes in case to case basis.
Each company should provide sample log which we need to follow for each
sample taken and disposed.
3) Load port surveyor gives sample for passing to the receivers at discharge port
Below sample log has all the elements a sample log need to have.
Conclusion
Ship staff have a moral responsibility towards profit making of the Ship owners.
Cargo claims are the biggest reason for profit loss statement imbalance of ship
owners.
Though sometimes the claims are legitimate but many times they are not. Cargo
samples are the only way to prove if a cargo off spec claim is legitimate or not.
This shows how important the sampling process is. But if we follow the general
guidelines for sampling, this could just be a routine operation.