Qatar to Move to Cleaner Fuel

Nakilat, Qatargas and RasGas Company Limited will convert a Q-Max vessel as a pilot project making it capable of running on LNG.

The proactive initiative reinforces Qatar’s commitment toward the environment with plans to convert an existing low-speed diesel LNG carrier to use LNG as fuel thereby reducing the ship’s exhaust gas emissions.

Shipyard operator Nakilat-Keppel Offshore & Marine (N-KOM) will complete the ship’s conversion at its Erhama Bin Jaber Al Jalahma Shipyard facilities in Qatar’s Port of Ras Laffan. The modification will utilize MAN Diesel and Turbo’s ME-GI (M-Type Electronically Controlled – Gas Injection) systems as an innovative and flexible technology.

The Q-Max will be the world’s first low-speed marine diesel engine to be converted to use LNG as a fuel.

In-step with the emissions regulations, the engine manufacturer, MAN Diesel and Turbo has made technical advancements to the low speed diesel engine to have flexibility to utilize Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), a cleaner fuel as compared to heavy fuel oil, as an alternative fuel source employing the ME-GI (M-Type Electronically Controlled – Gas Injection) concept.

Evaluation of the proposed ME-GI design for the Q-Flex and Q-Max vessels has concluded in a high confidence level with regards to safety and reliability of the propulsion system.

The use of ME-GI as an alternative will allow a cleaner fuel technology with a significant reduction in environmental emissions, cleaner burning engines with potential to increase mean time between maintenance, provide flexibility of fuel supply to react to market changes and reduced bunkering activities which in turn will offer operations and marine risk reduction.

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Press Release, January 14, 2014