DEME’s hopper dredger in Germany’s largest LNG bunkering operation

Belgian dredging specialist DEME said that its second LNG-fueled trailing suction hopper dredger Scheldt River was bunkered with the chilled fuel at Germany’s Brunsbüttel Ports on Monday.

About 85 tonnes of LNG fuel was loaded to the dredger, making this the largest LNG bunkering operation in Germany so far, and the first LNG bunkering of a hopper dredger as well, DEME claims in its statement.

The bunker supplier, Nauticor GmbH & Co. KG of Hamburg, a member of the Linde Group, delivered the fuel in five trucks, two of which were unloaded simultaneously.

DEME and its partners will make improvements in the near future to allow the dredger to be fuelled by a ship-to-ship bunkering method.

Nordsee Nassbagger- und Tiefbau GmbH, DEME’s subsidiary in Germany, is a partner in a consortium contracted by the water authority Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsamt Cuxhaven to perform maintenance dredging works on the river Elbe between Cuxhaven and Wedel in the period 2017-2019.

The deployment of the Scheldt River, which is scheduled for a period of about half a year, enables DEME to gather experience and knowledge about all the technical and economic aspects related to operating a dredging vessel powered by LNG, the company said.

The 8,400-cbm hopper capacity dredger has an overall length of 115.9 meters and a breadth of 25 meters.

It is the second dredger in the DEME fleet equipped with dual fuel engines. It joined Minerva, the first LNG-fueled hopper dredger built by the Dutch shipyard Royal IHC for DEME.