Propeller demonstrates fuel savings

The three ships are the last in a series order, for identical vessels, contracted from the Jiangmen Nanyang Shipyard. The three ships were ordered with slower-turning main engines, to improve fuel consumption. To maximise potential improvements, the ships were fitted with the recently-developed high efficiency NPT propeller from SMP. The gain from the new propeller was conservatively estimated at some 3% during the design stage – see previous news story.

Due to main engine delivery schedules one of the three ships retained the original machinery configuration but was fitted with an NPT propeller. This provided an opportunity to obtain full scale performance results comparing previous ships in the class fitted with the original machinery and propeller, to one fitted with an NPT propeller.

Sea trial results reported by the shipyard showed a much larger than expected improvement – around 6%. While it is possible that other factors, such as differences in hull condition and measurement accuracy have influenced the trial results, SMP believes that it is reasonable to say that the expected gain in efficiency has been achieved, and probably exceeded.

Norden will be monitoring the long term performance of the ships in service to confirm the results, and the trial results for the first of the class with the slower turning main engine and NPT propeller should be available shortly.