Wärtsilä and Mitsubishi announce smaller low-speed engines

Wärtsilä introduces two new low-speed marine diesel engines at the Wärtsilä Licensees Conference held this week in Lucerne, Switzerland. The engines are developed in co-operation with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan, taking advantage of the strengths of both companies with these types of engines. This project comes under the strategic alliance between Wärtsilä and Mitsubishi agreed in September 2005.

The power range of the new engines is 3,500-9,000 kW. They have cylinder bores of 350 and 400 mm, and each is available as Wärtsilä RT-flex electronically-controlled common-rail engines and Wärtsilä RTA mechanically-controlled engines. Based on the RTA engine designs, Mitsubishi will develop UEC-LSE series engines.

The new engines extend the low-speed engine range available from Wärtsilä to lower powers for many types of small and medium-sized commercial vessels. They are designed to give the best powers and speeds for a wide variety of ship types, such as handysize bulk carriers and product tankers, general cargo vessels, reefers, feeder container ships, and small LPG carriers. The market for the new engines in such vessels is world-wide though there is a greater volume of such newbuildings from shipyards in East Asia, especially China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.