Navantia shipyard on Thursday bench tested the retrofitted Caterpillar engine set to be used in the Fred.Olsen high-speed ro-pax ferry Bencomo Express.
The retrofit of the Bencomo Express is being carried out under the Gainn4Ship Innovation project co-financed by the European Union through its Connecting Europe facility.
The aim of the project is to complete the retrofit of a high-speed ro-pax ferry to run on LNG by 2018. All four of the vessels current Caterpillar engines will be retrofitted to run on LNG.
The statement by the Fundacion Valenciaport, the project coordinator, says that in the next few days, the engine testing will be completed with the acceptance test, which certifies the safe and reliable operation of the engine in dual-fuel mode, in compliance with the technical standards and emissions regulations currently in force.
Measurements of exhaust gas emissions from the retrofitted engine were carried out with the collaboration in the project of technicians and teams from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT), showing 90 percent reduction in sulphur oxides, as well as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides when running in dual-fuel mode.