Post by ferryfast admin on Jun 23, 2011 10:41:38 GMT -5
23 June, 2011 10:52AM AEST
Revolutionary wing gives potential lift to sinking shipping industry
By Damien Brown (Producer)
For photo, see...
www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/06/23/3251412.htm
With rising fuel costs hitting our hip pocket and the impacts of global warming dominating the daily news a Tasmanian ship builder has decided to tackle these issues head on and hopes to revolutionise the world's passenger ferry industry at the same time.
The new design has already been on the drawing board for more than a decade and looks likely to be Incat chairman Bob Clifford's final legacy.
The new design, which is in concept stage, places passengers and cargo in a wing shaped structure lifted by a column of air and sitting on top of a propulsion system.
The engine jets the vessel to around 70 knots, or around 130 kilometres per hour.
Once the vessel reaches that speed, the wing lifts the structure out of the water leaving just five per cent of the ship in the water with estimates showing it then only uses a fraction of the current fuel amounts burnt by Mr Clifford's already fuel efficient catamarans.
Mr Clifford says unlike other `sea plane' designs that can become unstable when they reach high speeds or hit windy or rough conditions, his wing design slows down once the propulsion system leaves the water essentially slowing it down and steadying it.
With such a small section of the vessel left in the water, Mr Clifford estimates fuel usage can be cut by 75 per cent.
He says a conventional ship also `pushes' 30,000 tonnes of water from its bow compared to the wing design pushing just 5000 tonnes or less.
"Once we have refined it, the wing will be able to carry 200 passengers all sitting facing forward looking out the window within the wing itself," Mr Clifford says.
"The hull will be relatively small not unlike some flying boats of the past.
"I have already been working on this in excess of 10 years and I think we are making good progress at the moment and within five years we could very well have a small passenger version to try with economic testing with a customers, but it is probably another 20 years before we see something bigger."
Mr Clifford says the design could revolutionise the industry.
"On a typical ship across Bass Strait a ship might be pushing 20,000 tonnes to 30,000 tonnes of water out of the way as it moves along the Strait," he says.
"A ship that pushes only 5000 tonnes of water out of the way at the same speed will burn on a quarter the amount of the fuel, so light weight ships will come into their own. Not necessarily fast because you don't have to go fast, you might have to go more moderate speeds to keep the fuel consumption down.
"But where the conventional ship may come down from 25 knots to even 15 knots to save fuel we'll come down from 40 to 25 and we're still faster, we're still burning a lot less fuel than anybody else, so the fuel advantages are very high.
"I can see the industry, and this applies to us and a few competitors, have a huge opportunity ahead of us to revolutionise sea transport so we are going to be very busy in the future."
Following the Global Financial Crisis, the shipping industry all but sank according to Mr Clifford.
However, as a ban on ships that burn heavy black crude oil is slowly coming in to many major sea routes around the world, ships that run on cleaner diesel fuels and liquefied natural gas, such as the Incat catamarans, will be more in demand.
"It is not happening instantly in one place, it is happening around England, the Baltic, around North America, the fuel regulations are tightening up significantly and will continue tightening up.
"It means travelling the oceans of the world using this crude, tar-like substances [fuels] ... will no longer exist, and they will from now on have to be burning high quality distillate fuel, gas or some other other form of fuel that is environmentally friendly.
"Fortunately for us, our ships have been burning high quality fuel already, so we have suddenly had an increase in market potential because all of our competition have to start burning quality fuel as well.
"That in itself is going to create a very big market."
He says the uptake of the cleaner fuels would also push up its price leading to a need for other newer designs for sea travel.
For now his design for a vessel that sits on a column of air remains in a small scale with the prototype wing resting in the car park of the Hobart ship builder's Derwent Park offices.
Revolutionary wing gives potential lift to sinking shipping industry
By Damien Brown (Producer)
For photo, see...
www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/06/23/3251412.htm
With rising fuel costs hitting our hip pocket and the impacts of global warming dominating the daily news a Tasmanian ship builder has decided to tackle these issues head on and hopes to revolutionise the world's passenger ferry industry at the same time.
The new design has already been on the drawing board for more than a decade and looks likely to be Incat chairman Bob Clifford's final legacy.
The new design, which is in concept stage, places passengers and cargo in a wing shaped structure lifted by a column of air and sitting on top of a propulsion system.
The engine jets the vessel to around 70 knots, or around 130 kilometres per hour.
Once the vessel reaches that speed, the wing lifts the structure out of the water leaving just five per cent of the ship in the water with estimates showing it then only uses a fraction of the current fuel amounts burnt by Mr Clifford's already fuel efficient catamarans.
Mr Clifford says unlike other `sea plane' designs that can become unstable when they reach high speeds or hit windy or rough conditions, his wing design slows down once the propulsion system leaves the water essentially slowing it down and steadying it.
With such a small section of the vessel left in the water, Mr Clifford estimates fuel usage can be cut by 75 per cent.
He says a conventional ship also `pushes' 30,000 tonnes of water from its bow compared to the wing design pushing just 5000 tonnes or less.
"Once we have refined it, the wing will be able to carry 200 passengers all sitting facing forward looking out the window within the wing itself," Mr Clifford says.
"The hull will be relatively small not unlike some flying boats of the past.
"I have already been working on this in excess of 10 years and I think we are making good progress at the moment and within five years we could very well have a small passenger version to try with economic testing with a customers, but it is probably another 20 years before we see something bigger."
Mr Clifford says the design could revolutionise the industry.
"On a typical ship across Bass Strait a ship might be pushing 20,000 tonnes to 30,000 tonnes of water out of the way as it moves along the Strait," he says.
"A ship that pushes only 5000 tonnes of water out of the way at the same speed will burn on a quarter the amount of the fuel, so light weight ships will come into their own. Not necessarily fast because you don't have to go fast, you might have to go more moderate speeds to keep the fuel consumption down.
"But where the conventional ship may come down from 25 knots to even 15 knots to save fuel we'll come down from 40 to 25 and we're still faster, we're still burning a lot less fuel than anybody else, so the fuel advantages are very high.
"I can see the industry, and this applies to us and a few competitors, have a huge opportunity ahead of us to revolutionise sea transport so we are going to be very busy in the future."
Following the Global Financial Crisis, the shipping industry all but sank according to Mr Clifford.
However, as a ban on ships that burn heavy black crude oil is slowly coming in to many major sea routes around the world, ships that run on cleaner diesel fuels and liquefied natural gas, such as the Incat catamarans, will be more in demand.
"It is not happening instantly in one place, it is happening around England, the Baltic, around North America, the fuel regulations are tightening up significantly and will continue tightening up.
"It means travelling the oceans of the world using this crude, tar-like substances [fuels] ... will no longer exist, and they will from now on have to be burning high quality distillate fuel, gas or some other other form of fuel that is environmentally friendly.
"Fortunately for us, our ships have been burning high quality fuel already, so we have suddenly had an increase in market potential because all of our competition have to start burning quality fuel as well.
"That in itself is going to create a very big market."
He says the uptake of the cleaner fuels would also push up its price leading to a need for other newer designs for sea travel.
For now his design for a vessel that sits on a column of air remains in a small scale with the prototype wing resting in the car park of the Hobart ship builder's Derwent Park offices.