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Engine Technologies News

25 Mar 2024

Svitzer Targets Methanol-Fuelled MAN 175DF-M Engine

Source: MAN

MAN Energy Solutions and Svitzer have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) focused on the development of a methanol-fuelled version of the MAN 175D engine. Designated 175DF-M (Dual Fuel-Methanol), the MoU targets the finalisation of a field-test agreement based on which a dual-fuel engine and plant equipment will be installed on board one of Svitzer’s newbuild tugs.Svitzer has a long-standing relationship with MAN Energy Solutions, especially recently with the MAN 175D engine.

08 Dec 2023

ORNL, Caterpillar Collaborate on Methanol as Fuel for Marine Engines

Credit: Genevieve Martin, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy.

A collaboration between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Caterpillar Inc. will investigate using methanol as an alternative fuel source for marine vessels.Members of the research team kicked off the project with the installation of a 6-cylinder engine at the Department of Energy’s National Transportation Research Center at ORNL.The ORNL and Caterpillar collaboration focuses on a four-stroke internal combustion marine engine that will be modified to run on methanol.Although methanol has many advantages, it is more difficult to ignite than diesel.

17 Apr 2023

Svitzer Inks Deal with Caterpillar for Methanol Dual Fuel Newbuilds and Conversions

(Photo: Photo: Caterpillar Marine)

A.P. Moller - Maersk’s towage operator Svitzer has signed an agreement with engine manufacturer Caterpillar to utilize methanol fuel across its fleet as part of the company's decarbonization strategy.Under a recently signed memorandum of understanding (MOU), Svitzer will work with caterpillar Marine to implement dual-fuel methanol engines aboard its new tugs as well as conversions of existing Cat powered tugs, which comprise the majority of Svitzer's fleet. Following the recent Cat 3500-E series methanol-readiness announcement in September 2022…

03 Mar 2023

EU Backs Project to Minimize Methane Slip from Marine Engines

© ozerkina / Adobe Stock

A consortium has secured European Union funding to develop solutions minimizing methane slip from marine engines, advancing the environmental and climate benefits of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a ship fuel.Coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the Green Ray project brings together several companies from across the shipping value chain: shipyard Chantiers de l’Atlantique, ship owner CMA CGA, classification society DNV GL, technology group Wärtsilä, the Finnish Meteorological Institute…

14 Jun 2022

WinGD and Hyundai Heavy Industries Developing Ammonia Two-stroke Engine

Barbara Graziano, Ammonia Technology WinGD Project Manager in the combustion lab (Photo: WinGD)

WinGD and Hyundai Heavy Industries’ Engine Machinery Division (EMD) are working together to deliver the first WinGD engine capable of running on ammonia, as the shipping industry continues to progress toward decarbonization.Under an memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed during the Posidonia exhibition on June 7, the partners will aim to deliver a first engine by 2025, in line with WinGD’s previously announced timeframe for bringing ammonia engines to market. The project will…

31 Mar 2022

Caterpillar Marine to Invest in Methanol Engine Tech

© ibreakstock / Adobe Stock

Engine maker Caterpillar announced it is investing to develop methanol engine technologies as the commercial maritime sector continues to engineer and implement new solutions to reduce emissions.The company called the cleaner burning fuel a key to decarbonization in the marine industry. Compared to conventional fuels, methanol produces fewer emissions such as SOx, NOx and particulate matter.“This commitment supports the development of decarbonization efforts in the marine industry…

24 Jan 2022

Wärtsilä to Supply Methanol-fueled Engines for Van Oord's Offshore Wind Installation Vessel

A vessel being built for Van Oord at Yantai CIMC Raffles shipyard will be powered by five Wärtsilä 32 engines. Credit:  Van Oord

Five Wärtsilä 32 engines capable of operating with methanol will power a new Offshore Wind Installation Vessel (WIV) being built for Dutch contracting company Van Oord at Yantai CIMC Raffles shipyard in China, in what is the first such order for the Finland-based marine engine and equipment maker.Dutch marine and offshore services company Van Oord in October 2021 ordered the jack-up for offshore wind turbine installation. The vessel will be able to install next-generation wind turbines of up to 20MW.

23 Nov 2021

WinGD Sets Development Timeframe for Methanol and Ammonia Engines

(Image: WinGD)

Swiss engine designer WinGD announced that its engines will be able to run on methanol and ammonia from 2024 and 2025 respectively.WinGD’s multi-fuel solutions will be based on their well-established diesel-fueled X engines and dual-fuel X-DF engines. The ability to use zero-carbon or carbon-neutral fuels such as ammonia and methanol in both of its core engine types will give ship operators unprecedented flexibility in how they reduce emissions.Dominik Schneiter, Vice President Research & Development…

14 Oct 2021

ABB to Turbocharge First ME-GA Engines

(Photo: ABB)

ABB’s A200-L turbochargers will be used on MAN Energy Solutions’ 5G70ME-C10.5-GA engines destined for six 174,000m3 liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers ordered by four shipowners – Korea Line Corp, PAN Ocean, Knutsen OAS and JP Morgan – under a long-term charter agreement with Shell.The ME-GA is MAN’s first low-pressure dual-fuel two-stroke engine. It sits alongside MAN’s well-established high-pressure ME-GI engines, offering LNG carriers and other vessels an alternative way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and minimize air pollution at lower capital cost.

20 Sep 2021

Expect the Unexpected on the Inland Waterways

Among transportation planners, “resilience”, describing the ability to bounce back from adversities, both economic and other, has become a top consideration as we increasingly must “expect the unexpected.” The U.S. waterway system, covering the network of inland rivers and coastwise waterways, has seen a mix of good and not so good. As the 2020-2021 pandemic moves toward winding down, a recovery from the dismal 2020 is underway, but activity on the rivers is uneven. Ken Eriksen…

23 Mar 2021

Van Oord Inks Service Agreement with ABB Turbocharging

ABB Turbocharging will provide maintenance support and optimisation across Van Oord’s dredger fleet (copyright Van Oord)

Dutch dredging company Van Oord signed a three-year agreement with ABB Turbocharging to provide fleetwide maintenance and optimization services. The agreement comes as two Van Oord vessels receive the first turbocharger upgrades of their kind in the dredger sector, an upgrade at saving fuel and carbon emissions over the next decade.The service agreement, which marks more than 30 years of cooperation between Van Oord and ABB Turbocharging, is designed to help the owner minimize lifecycle costs and improve emissions across its fleet.

27 Feb 2020

Tubes and Piping Most Prone to Failure -Report

© Vlad Warsaw / Adobe Stock

When it comes to components failures in the maritime and oil and gas industries, tubes and piping are the top offenders, new research published by classification society DNV GL reveals.After reviewing more than 1,000 failure cases accross its network of five specialist laboratories in the U.S., Europe and Asia, DNV GL identified that, of the components examined, more than a quarter (27%) of failures occur in tubes and piping, and a fifth (20%) in rotating machinery. Fasteners…

20 Nov 2019

PROPULSION: LNG as a Fuel

The first shore-to-ship LNG bunkering of the offshore supply vessel Harvey Energy by Harvey Gulf International Marine at the company’s dedicated shoreside facility at Port Fourchon, La. (CREDIT: © Harvey Gulf)

Some forecasts expect 10% of the global fleet to be powered by LNG by 2030, a proportion that could rise to just under a quarter of the fleet by 2050. Will your vessels be among them?The year-end sulfur cap on marine fuels and recent industry commitments to reduce its collective carbon footprint are behind a surge of interest in LNG as fuel; widespread adoption, however, still faces strong headwinds on several fronts.After a period where the costs of transitioning to LNG as fuel – at the operational and capital expenditure (Capex) levels – had appeared to constrain demand…

12 Feb 2019

IMO 2020: More than Fuel Choice

Image: TOTAL Lubmarine

With a year to go before the implementation of the 2020 Sulfur Cap, few topics will be higher on the list of priorities for shipowners than complying with Annex VI of the IMO MARPOL Convention (2008). However, the reduction of sulfur content in marine fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% in time for the deadline means more than identifying a strategically suitable fuel choice. The importance of choosing the correct lubricant, coupled with incorporating the relevant supporting is also a vital consideration.As both a global lubricant supplier and as a part of the wider Total Group…

20 Sep 2018

C-Job Researching Ammonia as Marine Fuel

(Image: C-Job Naval Architects)

C-Job Naval Architects based in the Netherlands announced it has joined the Ammonia Energy Association, strengthening its commitment to research ammonia as a renewable fuel for the maritime industry.With the International Maritime Organization announcing its plans to reduce and eventually fully eliminate ship emissions, it is of the utmost importance that the global maritime industry looks into renewable fuels. C-Job said it has identified Hydrogen Based Renewables (HBR) as the best solution and sees ammonia (NH3) as a high potential.Niels de Vries…

21 Mar 2018

MAN Diesel & Turbo, HHI-EMD Invest in New Test Facility

Views of the MAN B&W 2S5ME-C-GI test engine bound for HHI-EMD. (Photo: MAN D&T)

As the global maritime industry steams toward ever-stricter fuel and emission rules, industry leaders such as MAN Diesel & Turbo and Hyundai continue to invest in facilities and technologies. In the most recent case, MAN D&T said today it will build a new test-engine facility in collaboration with its two-stroke licensee, HHI-EMD, the engine and machinery division of Hyundai Heavy Industries. The new venture -- located in Ulsan, Korea at HHI-EMD’s works and scheduled to open in 2019 -- will expand MAN Diesel & Turbo’s R&D test capacity and strengthen its development of dual-fuel gas engines.

31 Aug 2017

Power Play: Engine Suppliers Prepare for 2020

(Photo: MAN Diesel & Turbo)

Kjeld Åbo, Chairman of CIMAC (the International Council on Combustion Engines) Fuels Working Group and Director Customer Support, Two Stroke Marine at MAN Diesel & Turbo, has said that the IMO’s proposed 0.5 percent marine fuel sulfur content limit was not unexpected but that there were a number of practical and strategic issues that needed to be addressed if the new regulations were to be implemented successfully by 2020. This article looks at how manufacturers of marine engines are rising to the challenge of meeting the IMO’s new sulfur oxides (Sox) emissions standards.

24 Mar 2015

Finland: A Maritime Powerhouse

Innovation, superior technology and competitiveness are the characteristics that have brought the Finnish maritime industry world repute. Its well-knit maritime cluster responsible for achieving a high level of production has propelled it into prominence in the global market. Extreme conditions during winter have set technological and quality demands on Finnish shipping which, in turn has contributed towards the emergence of a competitive maritime industry in Finland. The Finnish Maritime and Offshore Cluster (incl. Marine industries, shipping and port operations in private and public sectors) is one of the central industries in the Finnish technology industries.

27 Mar 2017

New Fuel Regs Drive Scrubber Business

A Wärtsilä V-SOx Scrubber being installed on board the MV Tarago. (Photo: Wärtsilä)

The Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems Association and its members are preparing to meet higher demand for gas scrubbing systems to bring SOx emissions in line with the targets set by the IMO’s 2020 fuel sulfur content proposals. As previously reported by this correspondent in Maritime Reporter and Engineering News (December 2016 issue, page 24; January 2017 issue, page 28), the IMO has come in for some severe criticism over its proposals to introduce a global marine fuels sulfur content cap of 0.5 percent (mass/mass) by the year 2020.

20 Apr 2015

ClassNK Opens R&D Center in Singapore

Left to right: RM Kurashiki (ClassNK), T Kinoshita (ClassNK), PM Ravindran (ClassNK) and Dr Thepsithar (NTU). (Photo courtesy of ClassNK)

Classification society ClassNK promoted the activities of its new Global Research and Innovation Center (GRIC) at a press conference held today in Singapore. Joined by representatives from Nanyang Technological University, ClassNK Executive Vice President Tetsuya Kinoshita explained the rationale behind GRIC and the current goals for the center. Maritime technologies: Research and development into creating new technologies and improving existing technologies in the fields of safe/smart ships such as condition-based monitoring technology…

10 May 2016

Wärtsilä Joins LNG-powered Bulker Project

Wärtsilä is to team up with an international group of shipping industry companies and organisations in a project to develop a concept for equipping future dry bulk carrier vessels with LNG propulsion. Project Forward is led by Athens-based Arista Shipping. It began officially in May 2015 with the aim of developing a commercially feasible LNG powered dry bulk carrier design capable of complying with the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) Energy Efficiency Design Index 2025 standards, as well as with all relevant emission reduction regulations. In addition to Arista Shipping, the other parties involved in the project are Finnish ship designer Deltamarin…

06 Jul 2015

Hercules-2 Officially Launched

MAN Diesel & Turbo, Wärtsilä and Winterthur Gas & Diesel to collaborate on major, EU-funded project. A major cross-industry initiative led by MAN Diesel & Turbo, Wärtsilä, and Winterthur Gas & Diesel, to develop basic technologies for use in 2- and 4-stroke marine engines has been officially launched. The Hercules-2 project is aimed at fostering environmentally sustainable and more efficient shipping. It is in line with general European Union policy and is partly funded by the EU. Altogether, 32 marine industry partners from 11 different companies, 16 universities, and five research organisations are cooperating in this project, with NTU Athens as coordinator. The R&D efforts focus on four main areas.

22 Sep 2014

HERCULES-2 Phoenix Rises from the Ashes

Wärtsilä Corporation advises that the HERCULES R&D programme to develop large engine technologies, which was initiated in 2004 as a joint vision by the two major European engine manufacturing groups, Wärtsilä and MAN Diesel & Turbo, is to continue with a new HERCULES-2 project, pending approval under the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The HERCULES-2 project is aimed at developing a fuel-flexible marine engine that is optimally adaptive to its operating environment. The work will focus on four areas of integrated R&D divided into Work Package Groups (WPG), as follows: WPG 1 - a fuel flexible engine; WPG II - new materials (for engine applications); WPG III - an adaptive powerplant for  lifetime performance; and WPG IV - a near zero emissions engine.