The COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry (Guangdong) yard has announced that it will retrofit the main engines aboard two LPG carriers from the fleet of Tianjin Southwest Maritime Ltd., the Chinese liquefied-gas carrier operator. In doing so, it is exercising the option in a contract signed with MAN Energy Solutions’s after-sales division, MAN PrimeServ, in October 2022 to similarly retrofit two LPG carriers to dual-fuel operation, according to the company's release.
Accordingly, the individual MAN B&W 6G60ME-C engines aboard vessels, ‘Gas Libra ‘and ‘Gas Scorpio’, will be retrofitted to dual-fuel MAN B&W 6G60ME-LGIP units capable of running on LPG, to which end they are scheduled to enter drydock in January 2024. As with the previous two vessels, MAN PrimeServ will jointly carry out the work with CMS (CSSC Marine Service Co. Ltd.), the after-sales subsidiary of CSSC Marine Power Group.
The taking up of the original contract’s option also follows Oslo-listed BW LPG – the world's leading owner and operator of LPG vessels – announcement in June 2022 that it, under MAN PrimeServ’s supervision, had converted the main engine of the ‘BW Malacca’ to dual-fuel running. The last such conversion for a series of 15 LPG carriers, all work was carried out at Yiu Lian Dockyards in Shenzhen, evidence of China’s ability to successfully execute such retrofits.
Compared to 2020-compliant fuels, using LPG as a fuel would reduce: SOx by 99%, CO2 by 15%, NOx by 10%, and particulate matter by 90%.