Caterpillar powers world’s first LNG-powered barge

Five Cat G3516 engines will be used to power the Becker Marine Systems subsidiary, Hybrid Port Energy, LNG-hybrid barge, the world’s first LNG-powered barge.

The contract was led by Cat dealer Zeppelin Power Systems which will continue to support packaging and installation of the Cat power solutions.

“We are working very closely with the technical team from Zeppelin and Bureau Veritas to provide a customer solution which is not only safe and environmentally friendly, but also very economical in regards to the lowest cost of operation,” said Chris Chenette, Caterpillar large power system marine product value manager.

“The G3516 marine engines represent a pinnacle in efficiency and peak performance, with the capability to handle the dynamic load profiles in typical vessel operations.” He added that the G3516 is a spark-ignited, gas engine specially designed to operate in commercial vessel applications.

The base engine is the land-based Cat G3516C Island Mode genset engine which has a vee-16 configuration, providing 1550 ekW at 1,500 rpm and its gas fuelled units provided are capable of providing up to 7.75 MW of electric power.

Meanwhile, the fuel system is an inlet fumigated low pressure gas system able to run at 100% power with gas qualities down to methane nr 70.

This solution is compliant with the Marine Classification Societies requirements, SOLAS and is also certified by Bureau Veritas.

“For this particular project, some changes to the engine were required in order to meet the strict marine classification society standards,” added Mr Chenette. “However we were able to leverage many of the solutions from our current Cat 3500 type approved marine diesel engine.”

The Cat G3516C is just one product making up Caterpillar’s LNG initiative, explained Jason Spear, Caterpillar Marine product definition engineer.

“As part of our tactical new product introductions, we are bringing high speed dual fuel solutions to the market for customers who require the flexibility to operate on diesel in the event natural gas bunkers are not available,” he said.

“Moving into the future Caterpillar Marine will be able to offer a complete line of propulsion and auxiliary engines with configurations capable of using dual fuel or 100% natural gas.”

Based in the Port of Hamburg, the LNG-hybrid barge will provide clean and efficient shore power to cold ironing cruise ships and serve as a backup power provider for the Hamburg electric power and heat grid. The barge will be 74m in length, 11.4m wide and approx. 1.7m draught and is due to be launched this summer.

By Katina Read