The worlds largest container ship is powered by Wärtsilä
When the ‘Marco Polo’ entered service in November 2012, it became the largest container ship in the world measured by capacity. It has a maximum TEU capacity in excess of 16,000, in other words, 97 km of containers in line. It is 396 metres long and nearly 54 metres wide. Just to give an idea of what these dimensions mean in day-to-day terms, the ship is larger than a US Navy aircraft carrier, and longer than four football pitches.
The ‘Marco Polo’ is owned by CMA CGM, a Frenchcontainer transportation and shipping company,and was built at the Daewoo shipyard in Okpo, Korea. It is the first of a series of three based on an extrapolated design slightly larger than that used for CMA CGM’s Christopher Columbus class. All of these giants are powered by the 14-cylinder,Wärtsilä RT-flex96C low speed diesel engine, the proven solution for large and ultra large container ships.
The development of these mammoth sized vessels is a fairly recent phenomenon. For instance, 30 years ago container ships were typically in the order of 4000 TEU in size. Ten years ago, they had grown to around 10,000 TEU and more, and today we are exceeding even that capacity by 60 per cent. The reason behind this rapidly evolving trend is simply that of economies of scale. Global trade expansion has occurred simultaneously with a hefty jump in fuel and other operating costs; a development that has caused owners and operators to reach the logical conclusion that one very big ship makes more economic sense than two or more smaller ships.
There are also environmental benefits to this trend, since the fuel consumption per TEU is somewhat lower than for smaller container vessels. But the greater sustainability benefits are brought about by the choice of the Wärtsilä RT-flex96C engine. This electronically controlled, 2-stroke diesel engine has particularly high efficiency, which naturally results in less fuel being burned and correspondingly fewer exhaust emissions. Furthermore, the engine provides different tuning capabilities to achieve the optimal fuel consumption at different load profiles, such as part and low load.
This retention of fuel efficiency at different speeds is a huge advantage in today’s container shipping sector. Driven by over capacity in the market, and by the necessity to reduce fuel costs, owners and charterers have had to adjust not only their services, but also the speeds at which the ships are operated. Lower speeds reduce fuel consumption and, therefore, costs, and this is likely to be a continuing trend in this sector. However, the engine must be capable of the flexibility needed to retain efficiency while adapting to running at slower speeds, which is why the RT-flex96C engine is Ideal.
Source: Wartsila