Quote:
Originally Posted by KFM
Is that really the world's first LNG container ship? I remember reading an article about this a few years ago, but I thought that there had been a few others that were already sailing by now.
The rendering looks amazing. Pics ( if possible ) would be awesome.
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I believe it is one of the first ships to run largely on NG as it's main fuel. It's fuel capacity is enough to allow it to transit the Gulf. The idea of pilot injected hybrid diesel engines is certainly not new. The intention to run up to 95% of the fuel load on NG for the bulk of the journey is. However, other ships could do the same route on largely NG but are not uniquely tailored to the fuel. Those ships use the NG fuel as "port fuel" to avoid the emission penalties Cripple Rooster pointed out, that many port authorities levy on gross polluting ships. Ocean going ships use the very cheapest of fuel oil - bunker oil. Viscous and sulfur laden, the pollution per hour of these ships can equal the output of thousands of cars and trucks operating for a day. The new line of NG ships that are coming out now and in the future will be optimized for the gas fuel.
A big part of using NG as a fuel is, as Old Mech pointed out, safety. This new ship has numerous technologies that should prevent the ship compartments from turning into fuel/air bombs.
Another feature of these new ships is the inclusion of a small water treatment plant to treat all the bilge and ballast water to mitigate or eliminate the transfer of flora and fauna as well as pollutants.
The uniqueness of these ships is more the inclusion of all these technologies. This may be their claim to a "first".