French shipowner Louis Dreyfus Armateurs and Finnish company Norsepower have reached an agreement to install Norsepower’s Rotor Sail technology on a new environmentally friendly RoRo fleet that will be chartered to Airbus.
The Norsepower Rotor Sail is an updated version of the traditional Flettner rotor design. It utilizes electric power to actively rotate the cylinder-shaped rotors on the ship’s deck. By harnessing the wind, these rotating sails generate strong propulsion, leading to decreased fuel usage, reduced emissions, and cost savings.
Airbus will be using low-emission vessels to transport their aircraft components. These ships will be equipped with six 35-meter tall Norsepower Rotor Sails and two engines that run on a combination of maritime diesel oil and e-methanol.
Furthermore, the routing software will analyze and optimize the path of the vessels as they travel across the Atlantic Ocean. This optimization will prioritize maximizing the use of wind propulsion and avoiding any resistance caused by unfavorable ocean conditions.
By 2030, the new fleet for the Transatlantic route will produce about 50% less CO2 emissions than in 2023. The rotor sails will include the innovative Norsepower Sentient Control™ (NPSC™), a system that allows for real-time force measurement, control, and savings reporting. This unique tool enables individual control of each rotor.
The efficiency of the vessel is improved by effectively managing the interactions between the sails and the way the vessel moves through water. The design phase included thorough testing in wind tunnels and using Computational Fluid Dynamics to optimize the arrangement and design of the sails.
This fleet-wide deal is a game changer for the whole auxiliary wind propulsion industry and is the biggest deal ever made in the mechanical sails market.
Reference- Green Car Congress, Clean Technica, Norsepower Newsroom, Interesting Engineering