Kotug take-over

Caterpillar takes step towards methanol as a fuel

WIth the future fuels scene heating up, Caterpillar says it has developed its engines to be more climate friendly.

Caterpillar Marine says it can modify its Cat 3500E-series engines to run as dual fuel methanol in its drive to reduce greenhouse gases.

The announcement follows a March statement, in which the company said it intended to develop alternative fuels with a focus on methanol.

“Today’s energy transition represents a significant opportunity to support customers with solutions that advance sustainable operations,” said Brad Johnson, Caterpillar Marine vice president. “For the past decade, Caterpillar has worked with customers to reduce GHG emissions through biodiesels such as FAME and renewable diesels like HVO, and we are taking the next step to continue offering sustainable solutions for further emissions reductions.”

Caterpillar says it intends to offer similar modifications to other 3500 series engines in the future, ”By providing a range of solutions for alternative fuels and powertrain integration, Caterpillar Marine can offer pathways to support customers’ emissions reduction targets,” the firm says. ”Caterpillar Marine will share more information as development continues, with the understanding that an expanded methanol portfolio is required for success.”

KOTUG COMPLETES SEAWAYS TAKEOVER

Kotug International has successfully completed its acquisition of Seaways International.

The acquisition brings together the assets, expertise and people of two companies specialising in the global floating facility sector.

With all customary, governmental and other required approvals in place, Kotug says it can now focus on the integration of Seaways and strengthening its presence in the floating offshore market.

The founder of the familyowned Seaways, Captain Ashish Nijhawan, will be stepping down from his role as managing director with immediate effect, having built up the company from scratch. Today it operates a fleet of DPS-2 capability AHTs, fast crew suppliers and cargo barges as well as providing terminal management services.

“It is with great respect that we say goodbye to Captain Ashish Nijhawan, his sons and wife, whose accomplishments have been outstanding,” said Ard-Jan Kooren, president and chief executive of Kotug.

“Today, we welcome 340 new colleagues into the family-owned Kotug Group, whose corporate cultures and values are very similar and compatible.”

Captain Ashish Nijhawan said

8 Seaways 24, the latest DP2 asset

of the Seaways fleet

he was very proud of the company and thankful to everyone who had worked to support its journey.

“I have deep trust in a bright future for Seaways under the leadership of Kotug executing their vision to be the world’s leading towage and maritime service provider,” he said.

AGREEMENT SIGNED TO ELECTRIFY EUROPE

Danfoss Power Solutions’ Editron division and TESYA Group have signed an agreement to help electrify the European marine industry.

The partnership will begin with a focus on the electrification of passenger vessels, workboats and yachts.

“Mediterranean countries are increasingly developing their shipbuilding industries, while looking for alternative, more sustainable marine solutions. By combining our skills and technologies, we’ll be able to offer our local customers a turnkey solution for the best possible operation of their vessels,” said Philipp Fedorov, marine sales director at Danfoss’ Editron division.

Danfoss’ Editron will combine its hybrid-electric marine propulsion system with TESYA Group’s products, which include CAT diesel engines, propellers and control systems.

“The Mediterranean region is one of our traditional markets and we are thrilled to help it accelerate its sustainable transition,” said Enrico Dari, group sales marine director at TESYA Group.

SAAB SEAEYE TO CHECK OUT MALDIVES

The UK firm’s underwater robot will be sent to the island nation of Maldives to collect data.

A ‘baseline health check’ will be carried out for the first time on the status of the Maldives ocean and provide data to scientists and policy makers worldwide to enable the protection of critical nurseries, spawning habitats and related ecosystems.

UK-based Saab Seaeye will be donating its Falcon underwater robotic vehicle to join a fleet of submerisbles on the Nekton Maldives Mission, which is doing a systematic survey and sampling of the islands from the surface to depths of 1km.

The Maldives state is 99% ocean and 1% land, sitting on average 1.5 metres above sea level. It is thought to be facing a growing threat from rising seas.

The Nekton Maldives Mission will help create extensive new protected marine areas and ensure the ocean continues to provide for the Maldivian people.

Nekton is a not-for-profit UK-based research foundation working with the University of Oxford and a wide range of partners to accelerate the scientific exploration and protection of the ocean.

Saab Seaeye’s Falcon is a metre-sized, five-thruster vehicle equipped with the company’s iCON intelligent control system, and has been used for multiple operations, including inspecting dams and underwater structures, such as in France for inspection specialist IDCBPT.

DECARBONISATION AND DIVERSITY DOMINATE SMM

The commercial marine industry is taking decarbonisation extremely seriously, with barely a booth at the exhibition not mentioning clean goals in one way or another.

Under the same umbrella is diversity – of fuels, that is, with the only clear agreement being that there will have to be a whole range of options for the sector. Gone are the days when it was diesel for all.

Opening the conference on September 5, MAN Energy Solutions CEO Uwe Lauber added that in the current drive for sustainability, more focus needed to be placed on converting existing vessels to new alternative propulsion systems and fuels rather than simply replacing old vessels with new.

One of the new features of this year’s SMM was three ‘transition stages’ (Green, Digital and Cruise & Ferry), which each had 10-minute speaker slots on the stages at the conference as well as the usual networking opportunities.

Speaking at the Green Transition Stage on Wednesday, Rasmus Stute, DNV’s vice-president, area manager, appealed to the shipping industry to do its bit to help keep the global climate to a minimum increase of 1.5oC by 2050 in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

“We need to accelerate technology development, and significant effort needs to be made on the policy side,” he said.

No ‘one size fits all’

Stute said there had to be a shift to low-carbon fuels by at least 75% - currently, 78.9% of orders for new vessels were for vessels that will run on diesel, he said.

For smaller vessels, he said methanol was on the verge of becoming available, with rules and regulations in place.

“The new thing on the block is ammonia, which we are discussing quite a lot because it’s a relatively easy molecule, it’s easy to build, with relatively less energy compared to methanol, but it has a big disadvantage, and that’s its toxicity,” he said, which was why rule making was much more difficult than for methanol, which is already ready for application.

It was a similar story with hydrogen, he said, which would not be ready before 2028, fuel cells not before 2025, regulations not until at least 2030.

“The last important thing for the decarbonisation journey is carbon capture and storage, especially onboard technology, like washing CO2 out of the exhaust stream. We do not expect large-scale application until 2030.”

“To reach the 1.5 degree target, the regions and sectors need to move much faster, much stronger,” he said. “The fuel mix will get more diverse and fuel readiness and fuel flexibility is the key to reach this. Be ready for the fact that ships will change over the lifetime of the ship with the type of fuel that they are consuming.”

“We all know the so-called future fuels, which everyone talks about, will be limited for many years and therefore hard to come by and also expensive. This is why we believe there will be a wide assortment of different types of fuels in use and for that reason the vessels have to be flexible, so technology has to be flexible enough to cope with it.”

To allow maximum optimisation, says Nysjö, everything is fine tuned every second with feedback loops, which has meant that methane slip has been cut by half.

The technology builds on engines that Wärtsilä has already brought out, such as the 46, he said, and this is the smallest one so far.

8 How DNV would

like to see the shipping fuel mix

8 Rasmus Stute, DNV Area Manager

AROUND THE BOOTHS

With the exhibition spreading across 11 massive halls, it would be impossible to cover it all – so here is just a taste of what we’ve seen at SMM.

Wärtsilä strengthens its hand in future fuels

Tech firm Wärtsilä has pledged the modular engine it launched at SMM is future fuel proof.

The medium-speed, four-stroke engine, unveiled on September 7, can already operate on diesel, LNG, or on either gas or liquid carbon-neutral biofuels, and can easily be upgraded to operate with future carbon-free fuels as they become available, the firm says - keeping an eye on what could be coming but making it clear that it intends it to be the first Wärtsilä engine to run on ammonia.

“We are renewing and restructuring our portfolio and the aim is decarbonisation, obviously, so we are moving towards fuel flexible or agnostic engines as a way of future proofing our assets,” vice president Power Supply Stefan Nysjö told Maritime Journal.

MAN Energy launches dual-fuel engine

A dual-fuel engine capable of running on LNG, diesel and HFO was launched by MAN Energy Solutions, which has added it to its four-stroke engine portfolio, ‘clearing pathways to emissions compliance’, the company says.

The MAN 49/60DF can also run on biofuel blends or synthetic natural gas, the company says, adding that it ‘sets a benchmark in terms of fuel efficiency within four-stroke engines – both in gas and diesel modes – and therefore minimises fuel costs’.

“Dual-fuel engines are the ticket to the maritime energy transition,” said Wayne Jones, Member of the Executive Board – Global Sales & After Sales. “As we enter a new era of decarbonisation, the 49/60DF is a great, new choice for vessel owners that have ambitious, emission-reduction targets on their agenda. In essence, it offers full fuel flexibility to operators who can then choose from the various decarbonisation paths that open up as new fuels make their way into the marine industry.”

MAN has developed its engine for the cruise, RoPax, RoRo, dredger and LNG carrier segments, it says.

Schottel propulsion all the way

Propulsion system firm Schottel launched the latest in its rudder propellers at SMM, also reiterating its commitment to expansion with two recent purchases.

The surge in offshore wind has prompted the need for different vessel designs, said Roland Schwandt, vice president Sales, which is why the company has developed a new rudder propeller – the SRP-D (‘D’ for ‘dynamic’).

The SRP-D has three main new elements: a faster steering reaction time; a tilted gear box, allowing the thrusters to be placed closer together and thus afford more manoeuvrability in a wider area safely; and the placing of the electric motor on top, which eliminates a gear step, he said. “We are concentrating on propulsion systems,” said Schwandt. “If you look to the larger competitors they have a very diverse portfolio – but we are focusing on propulsion.”

Life saving from smaller vessels

Survitec’s new evacuation system for smaller vessels was launched at the event, with videos of the new helical slide that gets passengers off a ferry or smaller cruise ship and into one of four life rafts that can accommodate 150 people each.

At the same time as the first life raft is deployed, which takes 60 seconds from pressing the button to being fully inflated on the water, a second is deployed and floated alongside the first one.

Passengers then move to the second raft, which can detach and take them to safety while the process continues with a third and fourth.

Richard McCormick, technical sales director, said one of the key features was that the new MES did not need as regular checks and maintenance as former versions.

It was also granted Lloyd’s Register approval in July.

Marine batteries with a modular approach

Marine battery maker Corvus demonstrated its modular idea at its stand, with SVP commercial product manager Kjetil Dent Traberg saying the company’s approach had already worked for the world’s first fully electric fast ferry, the MS Medstraum, built at the Fjellstrand shipyard in Norway and operated by Kolumbus.

The company’s Dolphin Power system can be stacked in various directions and sizes according to the vessel’s space and power requirements, and are ideal for high-speed propulsion to reach maximum speed quickly or that need to be recharged frequently.

“Our modular approach means we can be at the forefront of new technologies that come to the market and don’t need to do different work on each component,” he said.

In brief:

8 DNV’s Emergency Response Service launched a new drift prediction feature to mitigate risk with disabled and drifting vessels and to predict the path of oil spills and floating objects, including man overboard and containers. “The drift prediction feature is a powerful addition to the toolbox of dataenhanced services within ERS supporting a fast and effective emergency response demonstrated across 741 maritime incidents over the past three decades,” says DNV’s ERS Principal Engineer Rossen Panev.

8 Intellian launched its Iridium Certus C200 Maritime terminal – which it says is more compact and lighter than any that have gone before, small enough to be fitted to any vessel – even unmanned surface vessels – and with a satcom system for all maritime segments. A single engineer can install the system, which is capable of running several lines of communication at once, and the firm says it ‘provides the perfect basis for future Iridium Certus-based safety services like the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System’.

8 Using AI-based route optimisation, vessels can save at least 7% of their fuel, start-up Deep Sea Technologies says, announcing a deal with Wallenius that could see its AI analysing the best real-time routes for 120 ships. Communications director Angus

Whiston says it’s taken 18 months and a couple of trips around the globe, but a deal has finally been reached whereby the firm will provide optimisation for Wallenius’ fleet using weather data, tides and currents as well as the condition of the vessels’ hulls to plot routes.

8 ABB has launched a SACE Infinitus circuit breaker that enables shipping and marine vessels to run on sustainable and energyefficient DC power grids, it said, premiering the system at SMM. SACE Infinitus is the world’s first IEC 60947-2 certified circuit breaker with semiconductor technology, optimized for low losses, providing an all-in-one device for DC power protection and control.