Wärtsilä’s New Aframax Tanker Concept Design

Wärtsilä Ship Design announced today that they have come up with a new Aframax tanker design concept that they believe will provide  higher fuel efficiency, lower operating costs, and an environmental performance profile to meet all current and forthcoming emissions legislation.

This new tanker has a CFD-optimized double hull, and is powered by a Wärtsilä X62 engine.  Wärtsilä also notes that time in and out of port will be quicker as this ship allows for high loading and discharge rates.

About the Wärtsilä X62 Engine

The X62 engine is an electronically controlled, common-rail engine with an extra long stroke and low rpm. It also has a minimized physical width to allow a slimmer aft hull form design, further benefitting the propulsion efficiency.  It comes in 4 to 8 cylinder configurations and has a cylinder bore of 620 mm and its power output is in the 8,000 to 21,280 kW range.

Compared to currently available main engine options, Wärtsilä claims the X62 engine can achieve fuel savings of seven percent on the specific vessel design. Furthermore, the same vessel speed can be reached using one less cylinder, i.e. six instead of seven cylinders. The seven cylinder version provides even greater efficiencies due to the lower rpm and higher de-rating.

For emissions compliance, an integrated Wärtsilä exhaust gas scrubber has been placed on the funnel. Main engine, auxiliary engines and auxiliary boilers are all connected to the integrated scrubber.  The scrubber effectively reduces sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions, and meets the 0.1 percent sulphur limit even with Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) having a sulphur content of 3.5 percent. A Wärtsilä SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) system has been placed before the turbocharger turbine for the main engine. The SCR is a post combustion nitrogen oxides (NOx) abatement system that permits optimized combustion, in terms of efficiency, while reducing NOx emissions by more than 90 percent. The abatement equipment is tuned with the main and auxiliary engines for effective operations across the complete load range and IMO Tier III requirements can be fulfilled.

“The new realities of the shipping industry call for higher fuel efficiency, lower operating costs, and better environmental performance. The new Wärtsilä Aframax tanker design meets all these criteria, and we are proud to offer this segment the combination of state-of-the-art design and superb propulsion machinery that can produce meaningful savings,” says Riku-Pekka Hägg, Vice President Wärtsilä Ship Design.

Aframax tanker particulars: