NYK has concluded a shipbuilding contract with China Merchants Jinling Shipyard (Nanjing) Co. Ltd. for four LNG-fueled PCTCs to be delivered from 2022 to 2023, intended to transport vehicles mainly to/from Europe and/or to the Middle East.
The ships are designed with GHG emission reduction, and to that end they will be outfieed with WinGD’s X-DF2.0 iCER main engine, the first time they will be utilized in the world.
According to NYK, the engine consumes less gas and reduces GHG by cutting methane emissions from exhaust gas by approximately 50%.
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. The use of LNG fuel, together with these new technologies and other developments such as hull modification, will contribute to a reduction of sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions by 99% compared to ships fueled by heavy fuel oil. Likewise, nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions will be cut by 96%, and CO2 emissions by approximately 40% or more (per unit of transportation).
Concluding this shipbuilding contract for these four vessels is in line with NYK’s plan to replace vessels in its current fleet with around 40 newbuild LNG-fueled PCTCs over the next decade to achieve NYK’s environment management target, which is to reduce CO2 emissions per ton-kilometer of transport by 50% by 2050. NYK aims to further advance to zero-emission vessels utilizing low-emission marine fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia from around the mid-2030s.
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