Incat 99mm Worlds first commercial LNG Cat launched

INCAT launched one of its largest catamarans in a two-hour-long procedure yesterday.

The 99m wave-piercing vessel has been commissioned by South American company Buquebus for travel between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo in Uruguay.

...... world first high speed passenger Ro-Ro ship powered by LNG (Liquified Natural Gas).

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/11/18/366274_tasmania-news.html

more info

http://www.incat.com.au/domino/inca...CBE2D8BAFCC344E6CA257862001495CC?OpenDocument

 

New air pollution rules are stimulating innovation in gas powered ships. Short haul Coastal ferries in particular.

http://www.sintef.no/project/Trondheim_GTS/Seminar Series/dstenersen_pres.pdf

 

Having owned a CNG car for a brief time,and it's limited range vs. tank space-I wonder how large the fuel tanks are and how they get all that LNG in there for a passenger vessel.

 

Good on 'em! Another "first" for Beanie and an impressive one at that.

We were approached about four years ago by a ferry operator who wanted to build an NG-fueled turbine-powered pax-only high speed ferry of about 50m length. The task appeared to us ot be immensely daunting and frankly I'm almost glad it never came to pass.

Hopefully there will be a lot more progress in the direction of NG-fueled vessels and we can learn more about how to go about it.

 

Instead of compressing natural gas which takes about 3,700 psi so a very heavy small tank is used while research is still ongoing to absorbed natural gas using such matter as charcoaled corn cobs is gaining ground. the cheap way is to use liquified natural gas. It takes up only 1/600 the room as compressed. Does not explode or burn BUT has to be kept at -162*. OK for large trucks and busses difficult for small cars.

 

LPG is available pretty well Australia-wide (Liquified Petroleum Gas) held in galvanised bottles of 4kg, 8kg, and a range of sizes up to several hundred kg - lots of restaurants use it in their kitchens, Taxi conversions are available and many cars are converted... Because they use cylindrical containers the tanks sit behind the rear passenger seats and take a portion of the boot space too, and the liquid Un-Leaded-Petroleum (probably same as your "Gas" for cars) option still remains as a reserve tank if desired and as a range extender (but the LPG offers about 500km or more anyway)... which is possibly what is used, being so readily available in Australia... refill services at most petroleum outlets, hardware stores and camping outlets...

 

What I was meaning...how big does the (diesel powered?) reefer plant need to be in order to keep all that LNG cold? Or would they burn NG?

On a similar note-years ago in Alberta an LPG train derailed and 5-6 of the tank cars went up.
The 26 ton -empty- tanker cars: they found half of one about a mile away and fragments about 2 miles away...and one car went into a forest and knocked down trees for about 1000 feet IIRC.

 

That's about the same time we were too. Perhaps the same operator??..they currently run one of our 50m Fast Ferries

 

we are talking LNG (liquified natural gas) - a different animal.

 

whats performance/MPG of that cat?

whats performance/MPG of that cat?

Looking at a map I can see a large and probably swampy delta just North of B. Aires, hence the need for ferry.

But would it be better to make a much shorter hop to "Colonia del Sacramento" and transfer to buses?

Maybe a marketing "big city to big city" thing?

 

Couldnt find much about its specific MPG, a bit on performance below

"The vessel is powered by 2 x MTU 12V2000 M70. Each of these engines produces 1055hp @ 2100 rpm. Propulsion is via ZF gearboxes through to 2 x 5-bladed propellers. Whilst the vessel reached a top speed in excess of 30 knots on recent sea trials, its fully loaded operational speed of 26 knots is achieved at only 70% MCR, resulting in an extremely fuel efficient solution to the client’s operational demands."

http://www.marinelink.com/news/catamaran-crowther338744.aspx

 

Bit more found on performance

http://freepdfhosting.com/b557e675db.pdf

eg.
Dual Fuel

Fuel Oil 2 x 70,000 litres
LNG main storage 2 x 40m3 litres - 4 hours of high speed operation

all the info on the gas Turbine as well

 

RW - those figures you gave in post #11 appear to be for a completely different vessel. (Also Incat Crowther and Incat are two completely separate and unrelated companies... there's a historical link, but I won't go into that...)
The IC brochure for hull 069 shows a pair of 22MW turbines. Listening to Beanhead (Bob Clifford) the other day on the radio, I understand it also has a couple of diesels that provide maneuveing and initial propulsion. The LNG turbines then kick in and give the boat a service speed of almost 50 knots, making it a faster journey than travelling by plane.
Interestingly, the turbines can also run on diesel and I think are actually started on that before being changed over to the LNG.
Blood amazing boat all in all....

 

The link #11 to the marinelink info is definitely wrong. I should have spotted that.

That last link #12 to the PDF is for hull 69, "world first LNG" is the correct one, thank goodness.