Page 46: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2014)

46 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? APRIL 2014 months of the year?will be protected by a pair of anti-ice barriers to manage ice jams and drifting ice blocks. The Sabetta seaport will also have six icebreakers to keep the port navigable in ice conditions. Glencore Xstrata Nickel?s Raglan Mine is located on the Ungava Peninsula in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec. Milled ore is trucked north to Deception Bay for shipment by sea to a railhead in Quebec City for further transportation to smelting facilities in Ontario. Ice capa-ble bulk carriers can transport large bags of nickel ore to market, such as those op-erated by the Netherlands-based Wagen- borg and its ß eet of 180 ice-classed ves- sels. Fednav recently took delivery of the 25,000-ton icebreaking bulk carrier, Nunavik, to transport nickel concentrate from the Nunavik nickel mine in north-ern Quebec to Europe.The 70,000-ton DAS shuttle tanker Mikhail Ulyanov was designed by Aker Arctic and built in Russia for OAO Sov-comß ot and delivered in 2010. Along with sister ship Kirill Lavrov, it takes on crude oil from the Aker Arctic-designed ß oating storage and of ß oading (FSO) unit moored off Murmansk in the Pri- razlomnoye oil Þ eld development in the Pechora Sea.Double Wide For many icebreaking operations, a single icebreaker isn?t able to create a channel wide enough for ships to navi-gate. This is especially true for Russian crude oil shipments in the Baltic during the winter months. A novel design from Aker Arctic has designed has resulted in a ship that can break ice sideways. The oblique icebreaker is an asymmetrical design. Using podded propulsion?one pod in the bow, one aft and one on the port side in the aft part of the vessel?the ship can move forwards, backwards and obliquely in ice. The Þ rst oblique ice- breaker, Baltika, is now undergoing sea trials and will be delivered by Arctech Helsinki Shipyard to the Russian Federal Agency of Sea and River Transport this spring. Baltika will be used in icebreak-ing, rescue and oil combatting opera-tions in the Gulf of Finland.When moving obliquely, the design also allows the ship to respond to an oil spill by creating a wider area for collect-ing oil. ?The vessel?s hull is being used as a boom to guide the oily water into the collecting tank via a hatch. The oil is separated from the water by using a skimmer,? said Arctech Helsinki Ship- yard?s Baltika Project Manager Mika Willberg. Aker Arctic is working with Finnish naval architects Mobimar on a trimaran icebreaker, which is actually a single hull ship with two side hulls. ?It creates a channel twice as wide without increas-ing the power requirement,? Niini said.Hannu Tiainen of Mobimar said the trimaran design is particularly suitable for ice operations and icebreaking. ?Our solution is to make the middle hull slim and simultaneously shaped so to break ice effectively. A slim hull means less breaking energy. The middle hull can be shaped so that the propeller can be placed quite deep without a risk of sta-bility problems because the side hulls provide the needed stability.? With the current design variations under consideration, Tiainen said the displacement of the side hulls is quite small compared to middle hull. ?With the propulsion being in the middle hull, the side hulls can be quite simple and shaped to give the required stability as well as bending the already broken ice edge down.?Aker Arctic?s model basin was used to experiment with multiple designs and OFFSHORE OIL & GAS ANNUAL © Aker Arctic Technology Inc. Aker Arctic is working with Finnish naval architects Mobimar on a trimaran icebreaker, which is actually a single hull ship with two side hulls. ?It creates a channel twice as wide without increasing the power requirement,? Niini said. MR #4 (42-49).indd 46MR #4 (42-49).indd 464/7/2014 4:04:13 PM4/7/2014 4:04:13 PM