Page 38: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2017)

Gerd Wessels, Wessels Reederei oices

Photo: Wessels Reederei

The initial LNG-? lling took place in Bremerhaven by the Hamburg based company Nauticor.

a 1,000 TEU feeder vessels. This young it is important for us to secure the future vessel for the Augsburg based engine vessel has been built in large series. of this feeder and our competitiveness manufacturer, and the conversion of

They are mostly navigating in the Eu- with this main engine conversion to- a ship towards natural gas operation ropean feeder traf? c. Fifteen identical wards clean natural gas fuel use.” is complex. There are differences be- sister ships are available for (similar) a tween the two variants of engines. for natural gas conversion. All these ves- The New Drive System instance enough space must be given sels feature the same main engine type Wes Amelie, which measures 152 x for the installation of the LNG-tank and from MAN which have been convert- 23.4 m, was put into service in 2011. the regasi? cation system, reducing load ed successfully in numerous landside The ship has a container capacity of capacity. gensets towards the use of natural gas. 1036 TEUs, and it was surveyed and The LNG-type “C” tank, supplied by

Thus, valuable practical experience and classi? ed during the construction phase TGE Marine Gas Engineering is posi- know-how could be gained in advance by Bureau Veritas (BV). BV is also now tioned on the foredeck and will contain for our following conversion. I’m con- the classi? cation society which super- 490 cu. m. of lique? ed methane. In vinced that also vessels from other vised and controlled the conversion total the tank installation cost the ship shipping companies can bene? t from according regulations and ships safety 29 TEU. Christian Hoepfner: “It was the experiences we will have. Future requirements. particularly important to us to offer our conversion will be pro? table with the Having previously been powered charterer an environmentally friendly possible increase of quantity. In gener- by one MAN 8L48/60 B at 9,000 kW drive system. With this decision we al, further gas conversion projects may @500 rpm running on heavy fuel oil, consciously accepted the reduction of substantially reduce the budget.” the conversion has changed this to load capacity”.

Christian Hoepfner, GM Wessels MAN 8L51/60 DF dual fuel engine ca-

Reederei, added: “This particular feed- pable of operating on natural gas sup- The Engine Tech er has been build in large series – there plied from one 490-cubic-meter LNG “Before we started with the conver- exist 23 sister ships of this SSW Super storage tank on the fore deck. The pow- sion we recorded the complete load pro- 1000-type (Schichau Seebeck-Werft) – er setting is now 7,800 kW @514 rpm. ? le of the vessel,” said Rainer Runde, and Wes Amelie operates currently on While there are several references for Project Manager, Wessels-Reederei. charter in the SECA area North- and this engine type, the Wessel-project is “They prove, that the use of the MAN

Baltic Sea. As a mid-market company the very ? rst retro? t for a container- 8L51/60DF as a main drive for the Wes 38 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • NOVEMBER 2017

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