Wärtsilä Gensets for Five New Box Ships

Posted by Eric Haun February 10, 2015

Five new COSCO container vessels will be equipped with twenty Wärtsilä Auxpac 32 generating sets. (Photo courtesy of COSCO)

Five new 14,500 TEU container vessels being built for China Ocean Shipping Group (COSCO) will be powered by 20 Wärtsilä Auxpac 32 generating sets. The ships are under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group yard in China, a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation.

The order was placed in January, 2015 with Wärtsilä's joint venture company, Wärtsilä Yuchai Engine Co. Ltd (WYEC). The joint venture was established by Wärtsilä and Yuchai Marine Power Company at the end of 2012 and started production in the middle of 2014. It is the first order for generating sets placed with WYEC since the formation of the company. Delivery of the engines will commence in mid-2016.

According to Wärtsilä, the customer's requirements for the container vessels were reliability, economic fuel consumption and high availability.

“This is a very important order that marks the reestablishment of Wärtsilä generating sets within the container vessel market,” said Roger Holm, Senior Vice President, Wärtsilä Ship Power. “The Wärtsilä Auxpac 32 engine with its excellent reliability and fuel efficiency is highly suited to this application.”

The deal is in line with Wärtsilä's strong support of the Chinese shipbuilding market. WYEC, located in Zhuhai, in the Guangdong province of China, serves this market with Wärtsilä's products and solutions, as well as with full service project management capabilities. The joint venture company is fully aligned with China's central government's plan to increase the locally produced content for marine equipment. The Wärtsilä Auxpac 32 engine is produced at the WYEC joint venture facilities.

The Wärtsilä Auxpac 32 is the auxiliary engine version of the Wärtsilä 32 family, of which more than 1,200 engines are in operation worldwide, the manufacturer said. It is Wärtsilä's most powerful Auxpac generating set and is aimed at the upper end of the merchant shipping market, notably large container vessels with an auxiliary power need of from 2,500-4,500 kWe per generating set. According to Wärtsilä, this powerful output, together with its compact design, gives it a power-to-space ratio that is outstanding compared to alternatives on the market.

The Auxpac 32 is available as 6, 7, 8 or 9 cylinder configuration. It is able to operate on different fuels, ranging from the lowest LFO viscosity of 2.0 cSt to an HFO viscosity of 700 cSt (at 50 °C). The engine is also able to use low and ultra low sulphur fuel oils (<0.01% S) as per the standards set by authorities for fuel oil used in emission controlled areas. The engine is fully compliant with IMO Tier II requirements, and when fitted with exhaust gas after treatment solutions reaches Tier III compliance.