NYK and China Merchants Jinling Shipyard have signed a contract for four LNG-fueled pure car, truck carriers.
These four vessels will be delivered from 2022 to 2023 and are planned to be assigned to transport vehicles mainly to/from Europe and/or to the Middle East.
On these vessels, WinGD’s X-DF2.0 iCER main engine will be used for the first time. The engine consumes less gas and reduces greenhouse gasses by cutting methane emissions from exhaust gas by approximately 50%, according to NYK.
Further, the vessels will be equipped with battery hybrid technology, which will improve fuel efficiency by mitigating main engine and electrical generator load fluctuations through the support of batteries.
NYK said the use of LNG fuel, together with these new technologies and other developments such as hull modification, will contribute to a reduction of sulphur oxide emissions by 99% compared to ships fuelled by heavy fuel oil. Likewise, nitrogen oxide emissions will be cut by 96%, and carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 40% or more (per unit of transportation).
Concluding this ship-building contract for these four vessels is in line with NYK’s plan to replace current vessels with around 40 newly built LNG-fuelled PCTCs over the next decade to achieve the company’s environment management target: to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per ton-kilometre of transport by 50% by 2050. NYK aims to further advance to zero-emission vessels using low-emission marine fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia from around the mid-2030s.
The four new vessels will have an LOA of 199.9 metres, a breadth of 38 metres and total car capacity of 7000 units.
