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Wes-Amelie

Actively helping to shape the Maritime Energy Transition

MDT is meeting the challenge of banishing fossil fuels from shipping

By signing the Paris climate treaty, 195 countries agreed on a target of carbon neutrality by 2050. MDT endorses the resolutions of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and is actively helping to gradually replace fossil fuels in shipping with climate-neutral forms of energy. In this context, MDT coined the term ‘Maritime Energy Transition’, which has since become firmly established in politics and society.

Support has been forthcoming from the German government: in spring 2017, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy launched ‘Energy Transition in the Transport Sector: Sector Coupling through the Use of Electricity-Based Fuels’, a funding initiative explicitly aimed at promoting maritime technologies. “We played a key role in developing this concept and intend to apply for grants too,” Adrian Hennek, Head of Public Affairs, explains. 

Emission reduction with LNG

A project funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) shows what implementation of the Maritime Energy Transition might look like in practice. The Wessels Reederei shipyard based in Haren, Germany, has modified the first container ship in the world to run on LNG. MAN PrimeServ converted the main engine from an 8L48/60 to a 51/60DF.

This enabled the ‘Wes Amelie’ to cut its SOx emissions by nearly 100 percent, its NOx emission by up to 90 percent and its CO2 emissions by up to 20 percent. “LNG propulsion systems currently offer the greatest potential. Liquefied natural gas is already helping us to reduce soot, nitrogen oxides and CO2 significantly,” Gunnar Stiesch, Head of Engineering Engines at MDT, explains. Setting up new-build ships to run on LNG is simpler, of course. It is harder with vessels that are already in service. “This ought to be the standard if we want to achieve emphatic emission reductions relatively quickly, however,” says Enak Ferlemann, BMVI Parliamentary Secretary of State.

Producing LNG synthetically

Under the heading ‘Power-to-Gas’, MDT is therefore tackling the question of how to produce LNG using electricity from renewable energy sources. “Research to this end is being conducted in a methanation reactor that MDT Deggendorf is developing,” says Gunnar Stiesch. “It is part of a joint project involving teams from science and business. Engineers and scientists are working in a number of sub-projects to describe a continuous chain from the production of electricity-based fuels, through efficient combustion in engines, to exhaust aftertreatment.”

The project involved the retrofitting of the 1,036-teu feeder container ship’s MAN 8L48/60B main engine to a multi-fuel, four-stroke MAN 51/60DF unit that enables dual-fuel operation – the first such conversion of its type the world has ever seen.

  • Contact
Adrian-Hennek

Adrian Hennek


Berlin
Germany

Here you can find more information on MAN Diesel & Turbo and the Maritime Energy Transition

Maritime Energy Transition

The ‘Ambition 1.5°C: Global Shipping’s Action Plan’ summit took place on November 13th, 2017 in Bonn, Germany. Initiated by Gavin Allwright, Secretary of the International Windship Association (IWSA), and co-organised and sponsored by MAN Diesel & Turbo, the summit’s aim was to debate a shipping-industry-led agenda – with the participation of invited, influential industry representatives and UNFCCC delegates – to exploit the opportunities presented by decarbonization and create an action plan for the shipping industry.

 
 

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