Conoship, Huisman Equipment and Value Maritime are battling for this year’s Maritime Innovation Award. Although they have to wait until the Maritime Awards Gala on 4 November to find out who wins, the Maritime Awards Foundation has already released the official nominee videos.

The Conoship eConowind unit is an auxiliary wind propulsion unit for ships in the form of a forty-foot container. Inside are two folding “VentiFoils”: a wing shaped element of ten metres high using modern innovations in aerodynamics creating high propelling force relative to its size. As with sailing, wind power is directly converted into thrust for the ship, which, at the same sailing speed, results in lower fuel consumption and therefore less CO2 emissions. Depending on the ship type, sailing area and speed, between ten and twenty per cent of fuel can be saved.

One or more eConowind units can be installed on all types of ships, just as easily and quickly as a standard container. It is also possible to fix the VentiFoils on the ship itself. All that is needed is a 400-460 volts, three phase, fifty-sixty hertz power connection. The system operates fully autonomous and requires no extra crew.

Lighter Offshore Cranes

The two 10,000 tonnes offshore cranes Huisman Equipment BV supplied to Heerema Marine Contractors’ crane vessel Sleipnir are based on completely new design principles. This has led to considerable weight savings of the cranes. This means that less steel is needed for the cranes themselves and it improves the stability of the ship.

The main innovations are a segmented slewing bearing for carrying horizontal, vertical forces and swivelling the crane, hoisting winches that also serve as a counterweight and a crane housing construction consisting of load-bearing plate elements. Reliability studies have led to an optimisation of the design in such a way that the customer can be guaranteed that lifting operations can be carried out at all times.

Plug and Play Scrubber

Value Maritime has developed a small “plug and play” Scrubber (exhaust gas cleaning system, EGCS). It is contained in a twenty-foot transportable module. It filters both sulphur and ultrafine particulates from the exhaust gases of ships. Furthermore, the CO2 footprint is ten per cent lower than when using marine gas oil (MGO).

Because it has been possible to reduce the size of the scrubber to make it suitable for smaller ships and capacities, a new segment within the shipping industry can be served. Because of the modular concept, the system is also suitable for older ships and the scrubber can be financed independently of the ship’s current financing. This means even leasing the scrubber is an option.

Picture: Value Maritime’s plug and play scrubber.