China's Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry has begun construction of the second dual-fuel Aframax tanker in a series slated for UK shipping company Union Maritime (UML).
The ship will be from the same series as Brands Hatch, which was handed over to UML last year following construction at the facilities of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) subsidiary Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding.
Both ships were designed by CSSC subsidiary Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute.
Like her sister, the new tanker will have an LOA of approximately 249.9 metres, a beam of 44 metres, and deadweight of about 113,600, and a total cargo capacity of 800,000 barrels.
The ship will also be fitted with an LNG dual-fuel engine and "wing sails," which can be retracted when needed — for example, when passing underneath a bridge. Each sail can be precisely controlled via a hydraulic mechanism and an intelligent control system, enabling automatic capture of optimal wind direction for improved energy efficiency.
The new ship will be fitted with only two of the sails while Brands Hatch is equipped with three.
Editor's note: Over the last four decades or so, Baird Maritime has seen many similar proposals fail dramatically, with technology characterised by complexity, expense, and almost total lack of result.
Real-world conditions are rarely appropriate, and when they are, the technology necessarily requires expensive additional training or even dedicated crewmembers to deploy it. Not to be overlooked are the resulting windage and stability concerns that significantly affect the handling of the vessel.
Funding for such projects meanwhile inevitably involves direct subsidies, or subsidies-in-effect to the companies pushing them on governments or other gullible investors (not to mention very generous remuneration for the executives involved). Such businesses or business units tend not to stick around very long at all.