Jumbo Maritime’s HLV wraps up biofuel voyage across Atlantic

Dutch heavy lift shipping and offshore transport and installation contractor Jumbo Maritime has revealed that its heavy lift vessel (HLV) Jumbo Jubilee has completed a transatlantic voyage to and around the USA powered mostly with biofuel.

As informed, the vessel bunkered the biofuels at the Port of Rotterdam. It had loaded three Liebherr cranes onboard before setting sail across the Atlantic.

Jumbo Maritime and SAL Heavy Lift operate a fleet of 30 in-house designed heavy lift vessels with lifting capacities ranging from 400 to 3,000 tonnes.

The services of the Jumbo-SAL-Alliance range from transporting large and heavy pieces of equipment requiring maximum lifting capacity and outreach, to smaller, lighter cargoes.

Along the journey, the vessel required critical airdraft for some bridge passages and had to pass at ebb tide into Boston. The company chose GoodFuels‘ biofuel with the aim to cut harmful emissions. The biofuel is expected to deliver 80-90% well-to-exhaust CO2-reduction versus fossil fuel equivalents.

“Sailing on biofuels in US ECAs means fewer bunker calls on that side of the Atlantic saving on time and costs, a win-win for the Jumbo-SAL-Alliance team…,” the firm stated.

The two cranes on deck, carefully loaded and discharged in a dual lift, have now been delivered to Boston and Port Hueneme in the USA, and the third dismantled crane hidden below deck shipped to Rio Haina, Dominican Republic. All three cranes weighed approximately 400 tonnes.

Biofuel has been recognized as a potential solution for decarbonizing the shipping sector. To support the industry’s wider deployment of biofuel, French classification society Bureau Veritas (BV) has issued a new ‘biofuel ready’ notation. BV said that this notation will help the maritime industry address the main challenges related to the use of biofuels by ships, providing requirements to ensure ship safety and environmental compliance.

The classification society expects that this new notation will enable shipowners to take advantage of their preliminary work with the use of biofuels, while also helping them to be prepared in order to obtain Flag Administration acceptance with regards to the MARPOL Annex VI requirements on NOx emissions.

MARPOL was developed through the International Maritime Organization (IMO). It is the main international agreement covering all types of pollution from ships. 

Annex VI includes requirements applicable to the manufacture, certification, and operation of vessels and engines, as well as fuel quality used in vessels. The act establishes limits NO_x emissions from marine diesel engines with a power output of more than 130 kW. 

The standards apply to both main propulsion and auxiliary engines and require the engines to be operated in conformance with the Annex VI NO_x emission limits.