High-performance power solutions Wärtsilä

HIGH-PERFORMANCE POWER SOLUTIONS

Wärtsilä is a global leader in the development and manufacture of lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. The company continues to optimise its innovative technologies and to maximise the environmental and economic performance of vessels and power plants worldwide. Philip Yorke reports.

Wärtsilä is a global company that produces complete lifecycle power solutions for the marine and energy markets, including power plants for oilfields, engines for crude oil pumping, and compression solutions for gas gathering and processing. As a means of power generation, Wärtsilä’s engines provide a higher level of efficiency than traditional power plant alternatives. In 2014 the group’s net sales totalled more than €5 billion with around 19,000 employees. The company currently has operations in over 200 locations in almost 70 countries worldwide. Smart power

Designing and building power plants for utility companies and industry has been at the heart of the company’s business activities for decades. Wärtsilä has already delivered over, 4700 plants ranging from 10MW to over 600MW in more than 170 countries worldwide.

The company’s ‘Smart Power Generation’ power plants are based upon multiple internal combustion engines and are able to run on gaseous or liquid fuels, including bio-fuels. They provide industryleading energy efficiency, as well as fuel and operational efficiency and

in addition, help to integrate wind and solar power into the grid. As one of the world’s foremost engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors and lifecycle support providers, the company also supports its customers with project development, financing and project services according to their requirements.

Today Wärtsilä has the broadest offshore product portfolio on the market. It includes power generation, vessel positioning and environmental compliance solutions. The company also offers complete electrical and automation solutions, emission control, oil & gas handling, pumping and inert gas systems, water management and customised vessel design.

Unique marine capabilities

Wärtsilä is well known for optimising offshore performance through developing integrated solutions engaged in every stage of field exploration. The company’s cutting edge technology recently played a vital role in it securing a major contract to supply the ship design for an entirely new type of deep water dive-support vessel. The new ship is to be built for China State-owned Shanghai Salvage Bureau, one of the largest professional salvage companies in China. The contract with Wärtsilä was signed in January 2016.

The advanced Wärtsilä design features a unique combination of specialised capabilities, including deep water salvage operations to a depth of up to 6000 metres, deep water pipe laying and construction work and saturation diving operations for up to 24 divers using two diving bells.

All the design features are based on a single platform operating with DP3, the highest class of Dynamic Positioning. When built this will be the world’s first SAT diving support vessel with multi-lay and ultra- deep water construction capabilities. “For a complex vessel like this involving the needed sub-sea equipment, both extensive experience and broad know-how are absolutely essential. Wärtsilä was selected because of our strengths in both these areas. The contract highlights once again the value of proven, sophisticated and integrated system designs that Wärtsilä produces for the global marine market,” Says Riku-Pekkaa Hagg, vice-president, Ship Design at Wärtsilä Marine Solutions.

“The new vessel will be the most sophisticated asset in our fleet. It will carry out operations in very deep waters and in often difficult conditions. We believe the Wärtsilä design will meet all our requirements for successful operations,” said Mr Huang Yan, director of Deep Diving Technology Centre, SSB.

Optimising lifecycle efficiency

Wärtsilä has an important role to play in meeting the world’s increased demand for energy in a sustainable way. This is the cornerstone of the company’s commitment to sustainability and its portfolio of environmental products and services is geared towards solving different environmental problems. Particular emphasis lies in optimising lifecycle efficiency, minimising environmental impact by reducing air and water emissions and minimising waste volumes from both land-based power plants and ship installations.

Katsa Oy is a power transmission supplier. Over the years Katsa has become one of the leading supplier of high precision gear wheels, variety of turning devices and customized gearbox solutions.

Main customer segments of Katsa are marine & off-shore, vehicles & rail, mining & construction, pulp & paper, steel & metals, energy & wind and general machine building. Typically Katsa’s products are for demanding applications. Integrated engineering, manufacturing and assembly capabilities lead to flexible, cost efficient, reliable and on-time deliveries.

Gearbox designs include cylindrical, planetary, conical and worm gear type of gear designs and their combinations. Katsa has references of high-speed gearboxes with several thousands of rpm, but on the other hand there is an extremely large install base of different turning devices with slow speed features. Operated power can vary from low to 3-7 MW depending of the operating speed. Current assembly capacity supports gearboxes up to 15000 kg.

www.katsa.fi/en

The company’s sustainability approach is based on economic, environmental and social performance. Wärtsilä strives to improve its procedures and performance across a wide front. Its overriding focus is on ensuring profitability, providing environmentally sound products and services and ensuring responsible business conduct.

As a technological enabler the company’s responsibility is to develop such products and solutions that allow its customers to develop their own business in a sustainable way.

Unrivalled flexibility

For many decades, Wärtsilä has paved the way for improving the performance and reliability of gas engines. As with many successful innovations, various strands of different technologies have been combined to produce a new and viable solution. The outcome of all the company’s dual-fuel development work has resulted in unprecedented flexibility, both in terms of fuel choice and operational performance.

Since natural gas has low levels of harmful emissions and is relatively low in price, such flexibility is increasingly seen as being the key to compliance with environmental legislation and to controlling escalating operational costs. Flexibility allows the most cost-effective and most readily available fuel to be used wherever possible and gas to be used where feasible and where environmental regulations restrict the use of conventional liquid fuels. n

For further details of Wärtsilä’s innovative energy products and services visit: www.wartsila.com