Wartsila wins icebreaking order

Wärtsilä Corporation has received an order for four engines for installation on the first Sakhalin icebreaker to be built in Finland by Kvaerner Masa-Yards (KMY). The vessel will be equipped with three 8-cylinder Wärtsilä 38 main engines in diesel electric drive and an additional 6-cylinder Wärtsilä 20 engine to power a harbour/emergency generating set.

KMY has been commissioned to design and build the icebreaker by the Russian Far-Eastern Shipping Company (FESCO). Headquartered in Vladivostok, FESCO is the largest shipping company in Eastern Russia and its strategy is to be the leading operator of icebreakers and ice class vessels in East Asia.

Scheduled for delivery in 2005, the 4,000DWT vessel will have a maximum length of 100 metres and a shaft output of 13 MW. The Wärtsilä 38 engines will each have an output of 5,800 kW at 600 rpm and the Wärtsilä 20 engine will have an output of 1,080 kW at 1000 rpm. The engines are scheduled for delivery to Kvaerner Masa-Yards during autumn 2004.

FESCO will operate the icebreaker as a stand-by and supply vessel in Russian waters in the Sea of Okhotsk in the region of Sakhalin Island north of Japan. Conditions in the region are extremely demanding with air temperatures sometimes dropping to below minus 40 degrees C, ice banks can be as high as 20 metres, and solid ice more than 1.5 metres thick.

For this reason the design of the new icebreaker is based on the DAS (double-acting ship) concept developed by the Masa-Yards Arctic Research Centre (MARC). In essence, this means that the ship breaks thick ice by going astern. This reduces power consumption while also allowing the vessel’s bow to be optimized for sailing in open waters.