Sea chest

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The sea ​​chest (also known as the vacuum cleaner) of a motor ship is the point at which primary cooling water is taken from the surrounding sea during ship operation for the purpose of cooling the main machine (s), auxiliary machine (s) and larger waste heat generating systems. No sea water is drawn from small ships; the heat exchangers are then located directly in the sea chest.

It is a box-shaped indentation in the outer skin below the water line, which can even be walked on in large ships. The outer skin is open in the area of ​​the sea chest, but continues in the form of a coarse-meshed lattice-shaped dirt trap ( grating ).

Every engine room of a ship has at least one deep suction and one high suction . The vacuum cleaner is used in the port and on the territory. This prevents too much sludge from being sucked in. The deep suction device is used at sea, as there is a risk that the high suction device will temporarily dive out of the sea due to rolling movements of the ship.

If the emergency fire pump is not in the area of ​​the engine room , but rather under the forecastle , which is sometimes more useful for extinguishing work, then there is another sea chest there.

The sea valve of the cooling water pump is flanged directly above the sea chest, as is the vent valve. There is often a steam blower directly in the lake box to blow through the grating.

Ships that are likely to sail into the ice can channel their heated sea cooling water back into the sea chest instead of pumping it directly outboard. This reduces the risk of ice blocking the flow of seawater and a drop in the performance of the sea cooling water pumps. The ship's engines would have to be stopped and the ship would become incapable of maneuvering. Sea chests containing several hundred tons of water have been built in for regular ice-going ships in recent years. This means that you can drive through ice without the risk of the pump being blocked. If this water warms up above a certain level, cold sea water is added.

In the past few years, divers of the customs investigation team in the ports (port investigation team) have repeatedly found ship boxes as hiding places for drugs . In the port of departure, drug dealers have the drugs packed watertight and fastened in the sea chests by divers. In the port of the country of destination, the drugs are then retrieved from the hull by divers if they have not been discovered by customs officials beforehand. Usually this happens without the knowledge of the crew members.