Boosting Ship Efficiency Available to Purchase

Ship efficiency has become an increasingly important subject for ship designers and owners. Both the predicted high cost of fuel in the future and the need to reduce emissions is driving this strive for improved efficiency. IMO is also seeking measures to reduce the CO2 emissions from ships and their proposed Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) aims at ensuring that future vessels will be more efficient. Two ship concepts, a large RoRo vessel and a Cruise ferry, have been developed to highlight different technologies that can be used to improve efficiency. The designs show that the power demand can be reduced significantly with already basic naval architecture methods. Optimization of main dimensions for life cycle cost rather than building cost alone can give large savings. Also new propulsion concepts, such as triple shaft lines or Wing thrusters yield clear propulsion power savings. Other measures to reduce fuel consumption, such as waste heat recovery and wind power also show big gains.