Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Hyundai Heavy Industries’ Fuel Saving Propeller Attachment Becoming Popular

Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) announced that it recently completed the performance verification of its new fuel-saving propeller attachment device, Hi-FIN, and expanded the use of it to all ships.

The Hi-FIN is a pinwheel-shaped attachment to the hub of a propeller allowing it to generate counter swirls to offset the swirls created by the propeller itself, which improves propulsion efficiency.

The HHI installed this new energy-saving attachment on the 162,000 m3 LNG Maran Gas carrier of Greece in April last year, it completed the requirement to be used on actual navigating ships for a year.

The vessel, equipped with a Hi-FIN, can save up to 2.5 percent of fuel compared with the same type of vessels without a Hi-FIN. Calculating the ratio on the basis of an 8,600 TEU container ship, it can save about US$750,000 (817.28 million won) per year or US$19 million (20.7 billion won) over 25 years, the estimated lifetime of a ship.

Now that it has confirmed the effectiveness of the Hi-FIN, the HHI has won orders to install it on more than 30 ships.

The new HI-FIN device can be installed on broader types of ships, from LNG carriers to container ships, very large crude carriers (VLCC), and LPG carriers.

An official from HHI said, “In the prolonged recession in the shipbuilding industry, we will improve our competitive power to win orders by differentiating vessel performance, including the improvement of fuel efficiency.”

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