On August 7, the opening ceremony of the first phase of the Luojing Container Port Area of the Shanghai International Shipping Center was held at the container terminal of the Luojing Port Area. As one of the major transportation projects in Shanghai, the fully automated Luojing Port Container Terminal is derived from the traditional coal and ore loading and unloading terminal. It is the first systematic container transformation project of old terminals in China, which will further consolidate the position of Shanghai Port as a hub port and optimize the structure of collection and distribution. Zhang Xiaohong, the vice mayor of Shanghai, announced the opening of the first phase of Luojing Container Port.
Green throughout the whole process of construction and operation
Luojing Port Area was once the main operation area for coal and ore transportation services in Shanghai Port. Due to high pollution and low added value, coal and ore terminals were shut down in 2017 and 2019 respectively. At the same time, the shortage of container berth capacity in Shanghai Port has also become apparent year by year.
In order to increase the shoreline resources and expand the dock operation capacity, Luojing Port Area have begun a journey of "reconstruction". In September 2022, the revised plan for the Luojing Port Area of Shanghai Port was approved, adjusting the Bailian Oil Terminal and the existing coal terminal to container terminals. The project commenced construction at the end of December, 2022, with the first phase of the project completed and handed over on December 28, 2023. Subsequently, the terminal began commissioning and operation, with a maximum production capacity of over 4,000 TEU per day and night in the production process. The first phase of the project, which officially opened to the public, has completed one 100,000-ton berth and four 10,000-ton berths, with a designed annual throughput of 2.6 million TEU.
The transform project of the LuoJing port will be across through the whole construction and operation. The project cleverly utilizes waste materials to build a brand-new wharf, and the utilization rate of old structure resources reaches 70% in the construction process. The plane of the first phase of the project is anti-“F”-shaped deep into the Yangtze River, divided into the front, back, inside the three-file arrangement, the front file set up a 100,000-ton container berths, the back, inside the file were set up two 10,000-ton container berths, the terminal shoreline resources used to the extreme.
In terms of operation, the shore bridge, rail cranes, intelligent horizontal transportation vehicles (AIV), forklifts, inspection vehicles and other equipment and vehicles required for the operation of Luojing Container Terminal are all driven by pure electric power, supplemented by AIV intelligent charging and switching motors, the application of frequency conversion and potential energy recovery, photovoltaic power generation and other green energy-saving technologies, to achieve the operational process of “near-zero emissions”. At the same time, all berths of the terminal are equipped with shore-based power supply, and a shore-based power supply agreement has been signed with the relevant shipping company, which specifies the use of shore-based power drive during the port call of the ship, effectively reducing the carbon emission, exhaust emission and noise pollution during the port call of the ship.
Domestic “Brain” Precision Management of Intelligent Terminal
In recent years, the construction of smart port has become a strong driving force for the high-quality development of Shanghai port. Into the container terminal in Luojing port area, bridge cranes, rail cranes stand on the pier, automated unmanned container trucks carrying containers moving around the pier, almost no operator can be seen, this is the most advanced automated terminal.
Automated single-trolley container loading bridge, automated rail-mounted container gantry crane (ARMG) and AIV are the pillars of terminal site operation. At present, there are 14 sets of automated single-trolley container loading bridges, 31 sets of ARMG and 90 sets of AIV in the port area. Among which, AIV is different from the automatic guided vehicle (AGV) of Yangshan Port Area Phase IV, which is guided by magnetic trajectory to carry out the operation, it does not need to install the magnetic nails, and relies on the self-sensing recognition system and algorithms for recognition and navigation, which can realize the multi-directional accurate sensing under different angles and achieve the whole field without trajectory automatic guidance, and the level of automatic driving has reached L4 level. It can realize multi-directional accurate sensing in different angles and achieve full-field automatic guidance without tracking, and its automatic driving level reaches L4. At the same time, AIV supports mixed traffic, and has the ability of fine box area crab-shaped lane change and detour, multi-vehicle intersection game passage, foggy day operation, etc., which significantly improves the operation efficiency.
The “intelligent brain” of Luojing Port Area is the smart operation and control (NEO-TOS) system, which is the first localized and transformed application. The system is based on the infrastructure of domestic database, domestic operating system and server, relying on automatic control, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to fully realize the intelligent operation of shore bridge, rail crane and AIV.
In the future, Shanghai will speed up major port construction projects such as Luojing Port Area Container Terminal Renovation Phase II Project and the development of the north side of Xiaoyang Mountain, taking digitization, smart and green as the main line, and improving efficiency, expanding functions and increasing kinetic energy as the guide, to open up a new space for the high-quality development of the Port of Shanghai and the future growth of the box quantity, and create a new-generation intelligent and green port by relying on the strategic blueprint for the construction of the good Shanghai International Shipping Center.
Source from: China Transportation Net