MAN Diesel & Turbo has won the contract to supply the engines for six Chinese LNG carriers (LNGCs). The order for the 30 × MAN 51/60DF dual-fuel engines is a significant development for both Chinese shipyards as well as the LNGC market.

The configuration for the new order covers 5 × 8L51/60DF engines, all of the engines are IMO Tier II-compliant in diesel mode and will have lower exhaust-gas emissions in gas mode than IMO Tier III stipulates – fuel-sharing mode will be applied to each unit.

The customer is a consortium, formed by Sinopec Kantons, MOL and Shanghai-based CSLNG, a daughter company of China Shipping.

Each newbuilding will have a payload of 174,000 m³ and be DFDE (dual-fuel diesel electrical)-driven, providing the customer with the optimum redundancy. The vessels will be the first large LNG carriers with a DFDE configuration built in China.

The vessels will be constructed at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard located in Shanghai at the Jiangnan Changxing Production Line No.1, now the responsibility of Hudong, following parent group China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s (CSSC) re-organisation of production facilities. When delivered, the ships will load LNG in Gladstone, Australia for a number of Chinese import terminals – Qingdao, Beihai, Tianjin, Lianyungang and Wenzhou. Steel cutting on the first ship will be in January 2014. The sixth ship will be delivered in the fourth quarter, 2017. MAN Diesel & Turbo reports that the engines will be designed and built at its Augsburg works in southern Germany.

Fuel-sharing mode

Fuel Sharing Mode (FSM) describes the operation of a dual-fuel engine with a mixture of fuel gas (NG, NBOG) and fuel oil (MGO, MDO or HFO) at a certain ratio. All cylinders operate at the same fuel-sharing ratio simultaneously. MAN Diesel & Turbo’s Erwin Boijmans, Sales Manager – Marine Medium Speed business unit, based in Augsburg said: “This order is yet another success for the 51/60DF’s fuel-sharing capability, a special feature and one of the reasons we have especially focused on LNG carrier applications with the 51/60DF unit. This Chinese order comes on the back of another milestone LNGC order with the same configuration we recently landed in Japan and augurs well for the future.”

Adopting FSM brings several advantages, including:

• full load with low quality of fuel gas (LHV, MN)

• full load with low quantity of fuel gas

• full load with high ambient air temperature

• retrofit ‘DF-light’ (gas mode without pilot fuel system)

Archive photo of a MAN 8L51/60DF engine