• 06 Dic 2016

Dutch shipbuilder and maritime equipment supplier, Royal IHC has launched what it claims to be the world’s first LNG-powered dredger. The vessel is owned by Belgian company DEME.

The 3,500m3 trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) named Minerva is 83.5 meter long and  equipped with Wärtsilä dual-fuel engines meaning it can run on both LNG and conventional diesel.

The ship has a ‘Green Passport’ and a ‘Clean Design’ notation, “complying and exceeding with the strictest international emission requirements,” IHC said in a statement “ and the official christening ceremony will take place in the spring of 2017 in Zeebrugge, Belgium”.

IHC’s Executive Director Shipbuilding, Arjan Klijnsoon noted in the statement that the launching of the Minerva is an “important milestone for the dredging industry”. He also added “IHC had already started to investigate the integration of LNG into dredging vessels in 2012, enabling us to understand the challenges of this green solution. This gave us a solid basis to work from when DEME started its tender process, and helped us to materialise DEME’s preliminary design for LNG-powered TSHDs”.

DEME currently has three LNG-powered dredgers on order with IHC.