gCaptain.com

We don’t generally post press releases on the blog here, but we have been so fascinated by some of Wärtsilä’s previous work that we thought this is worth a post.

These are just a few excerpts of the September 23 press release from Wärtsilä:

Wärtsilä has received major orders for its recently established Wärtsilä Ship Design unit. The orders were received from customers in China, India and Germany. The Ship Design unit was set up following the acquisitions of the ship design companies Vik-Sandvik and Schiffko. The most recent acquisition, the Singaporean based Conan Wu & Associates will also be part of the Ship Design unit.

The orders call for Wärtsilä to design a Deepwater Engineering Survey Vessel, a Multi-Purpose Support Vessel, a Diving Support Vessel, and an Emergency Towing Vessel. Each of these contracts comes as a result of successful bids to design sophisticated tonnage.

Now let’s hear about the vessel’s.

The Deepwater Engineering Survey Vessel design is for China Oilfield Services Ltd, and represents a 4300-dwt vessel capable of drilling operating at deep water for geotechnical surveys and geophysical surveys. To date, most of China’s oil exploration has been in relatively shallow waters, but there is now a need to probe deeper. [Continue Reading →]

Excerpt from August 6 Press Release from Wärtsilä:

Wärtsilä-Hyundai Engine Company Ltd., the new joint venture between Wärtsilä and Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea, has received a major order. The order calls for a total of 16 Wärtsilä 50DF-engines for four ships to be built by Samsung Heavy Industries. The contract also includes an option of four more engines for a fifth vessel. The order is recorded in the order book of Wärtsilä-Hyundai Engine Company Ltd.

The engines are to be installed on so called Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessels ordered by FLEX LNG. The first engine will be delivered in February 2010.

Read the full press release HERE

About the Wärtsilä 50DF:

The new Wärtsilä 50DF applies the sophisticated tri-fuel technology incorporated in the reliable and well-tried Wärtsilä 46 HFO engine. It can be run either on natural gas or on light fuel oil (LFO) or on heavy fuel oil (HFO). The engine can smoothly switch between fuels during engine operation and is designed to give the same output regardless of the fuel.

The engine operates on the lean-burn principle. Lean combustion enables high compression ratio which increases engine efficiency and reduces peak temperatures, and therefore also reduces NOx emissions.

Both the gas admission and pilot fuel injection are electronically controlled. The engine functions are controlled by an advanced automation system that allows optimum running conditions to be set independent of the ambient conditions or fuel.

via www.wartsila.com

Check out these links to previous gCaptian posts on Wärtsilä’s most mind boggling creations:

The Wartsila-Sulzer Super Engine

Starting the Wartsila - Video

A Fuel Cell for Ships

Never Sea Land brings us the largest engine ever built:

The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan’s Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.

It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.

The cylinder bore is just under 38″ and the stroke is just over 98″.

The engine weighs in at 2,300 tons and is capable of delivering 109,000 horsepower.

The largest piston in the world!

More Enormous Piston Rods.

“DU-Sulzer 12RT A96C” translated to “One large MFD”

How it works. [Continue Reading →]

Our friend Jean Pierre de Lutz is building a new boat using green technology and writing about it on his blog. Knowing we are interested in new technology geared toward reducing ship emissions he pointed us to the European Union funded project METHAPU. Here are the details:

After nearly one and a half years of research and development, the EU-funded METHAPU (‘Validation of renewable methanol based auxiliary power systems for commercial vessels’) project is about to start trials on a prototype of a methanol-based solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) unit. The protoype will be tried and tested for performance and emissions under real-life conditions onboard a car transport vessel involved in international trade.

According to the independent Norwegian organisation Det Norske Veritas (DNV), one of the five project partners, the world’s fleet of ships is the source of two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, ten percent to 15 percent of nitrous oxides (NOx) and four percent to six percent of sulphur oxides. DNV specialises in risk management in various areas and operates internationally. ‘Fuel cells represent an interesting possible solution to the problem of reducing local and regional emissions,’ the DNV comments in its report on ‘Fuel cells in ships: safety & reliability’. ‘The technology is, however, still fairly unproven.’

This is what the EUR 2 million METHAPU project, to which the EU contributes EUR 1 million, is set to change: The one-year trial will help to assess the maturity of methanol-based technology and its suitability for daily use in the shipping sector.

You can read the full article HERE.

Starting a Wärtsilä 6 L 64… for a truly amazing engine read our post: The Wartsila-Sulzer Super Engine