Sea trials for new dual fuel fast ferry

Robert Clifford, Chairman, Incat, said to The Motorship: “This is the way that the industry is moving, we are confident that LNG is the way to go in the future.”

Testing of the ferry’s GE LM2500 gas turbine engines is currently underway and sea trials are currently taking place using ballast in a 1460 tonne displacement trial. The vessel has so far comfortably exceeded 50 knots at full power maintaining a steady 49 knots at 90% power while operating on marine distillate.

Mr Clifford explained that the Incat team is just working on getting the switch arrangement between the diesel and LNG right – this will be fully computerised, but the process of switching between the two fuels and keeping the turbine running is complex.

Mr Clifford points out that because the turbine doesn’t like idling on gas, the vessel will automatically switch over to LNG when the vessel uses more than 10% power. The vessel will perform 95-98% of each voyage fuelled by LNG.

This is of course the vessel’s unique selling point. Mr Clifford said to MS: “This is an environmentally sensitive boat, it’s much better than all that have gone before and the cost is considerably less in South America. Although the uptake of LNG has not been determined yet across Europe, we think that in four to five years it will be in common use.”

The 99m wave piercing cat, Lopez Mena (aka Incat hull 069) has been constructed for Buquebus and it will operate on the River Plate between Argentina and Uruguay.