BrandorKP posted:

So here's basically how grain moves for export in the US. It starts in silos after it's been harvested. Normally it moves from silos by truck to grain elevators. At the first set of elevators it can be transferred to other modes. It could be loaded onto the rail, into barges, or directly onto a ship (often the case on the Great Lakes). From the mid west there are a couple of typical paths for the grain to take. The most common path is for it to be loaded onto barges to be sent down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Once in New Orleans it's loaded back into elevators then into ships or transferred directly from barges to ships. New Orleans is the largest grain port in the US for this reason. Alternately it gets loaded onto trains and which then go to a variety coastal ports: Portland, Corpus Christie, Sacremento, Norfolk, Brunswick, Seattle etc. Once it arrives it's re elevated and then loaded onto the ships at grain terminals. The third route is that is goes from truck directly to a grain elevator on the Great Lakes, where it is loaded directly onto ships. The competitiveness of these routes varies from year to year. When the Mississippi floods more grain moves by rail, especially to the West Coast. When tar sands oil trains take up rail capacity, more goes down the Mississippi. When grain gets very expensive because of a natural disaster some where else in the world (think like fires in Russia) suddenly all the elevators on the Lakes start running. The generally trend is towards more moving by rail to the West Coast to head to Asia. Another way grain moves for export is by being loaded into food grade shipping containers. This was a growing trend for many years, but recently the shipping lines have been reluctant to relocate food grade empties to the in land US for this purpose.

All along the way USDA (FGIS, Federal Grain Inspection Service) and state agencies like WSDA are inspecting and sampling the grain. US grain is very high quality, generally speaking if it's something I'm tempted to stick into my mouth straight from a cargo hold (say barley) I don't have any issues at all doing it. I've never seen insects (but know the percentages of parts in the grain) and I've never seen rats. Import grain is another story.


Some categories of bulk carriers are being operated at a loss right now. There is an over capacity of tonnage because of the slow down in Chinese demand for coal and iron. The margin are negative in some cases.


Refrigerated and inerted holds. Think like long term apple storage.


Slow speed diesels with attached waste heat boilers were the most fuel efficient propulsion cycles for quite a long time. Recently Co-gas (gas turbines combined with waste heat boilers) became more efficient. But slow speed diesels are usually direct drive. They don't have or need a reduction gear. This is one of the reasons they started to displace steam plants during WWII. Later fuel costs killed steam.

And some slow speeds can be converted to LNG, because they were designed for the possibility. It was starting to be a thing for a little bit, but with fuel prices as they are now that trend died out.