NAPA joins Finnish consortium to help develop low-carbon shipping solutions

NAPA, a Helsinki-based maritime software, services and data analysis provider has decided to join the Clean Propulsion Technologies project (CPT), a consortium led by the University of Vaasa that aims to develop radically new low-carbon solutions across global transport sectors.

As informed, NAPA will strive to further enable methods to model and optimise total energy consumption on the two-year project.

Funded by Business Finland, which has pledged €7.9 million to support the consortium, the project aims to bring economically viable low carbon technologies from the research phase to real-world application in line with global environmental regulation.

Specifically, NAPA will apply expertise and data-driven voyage optimisation solutions to develop methods to model and optimise total energy consumption on the project. The company will specifically draw on its ‘Optimization of Total Energy Consumption Onboard (OTECO)’ initiative to incorporate the novel propulsion energy arrangements developed in the CPT project.

NAPA will develop virtual models in collaboration with the consortium partners to improve the modelling of non-conventional propulsion unit arrangements and the inclusion of important onboard energy consumers.

These will include vessel components such as hotel load for cruise vessels and cargo warming and cooling for LNG carriers and other merchant vessels.

By enabling the global usage of proper tools for virtual modelling and making them available for all stakeholders, it estimates that shipping efficiency can be improved by approximately 10-20%. 

“The cooperation with the consortium helps us by bringing together companies and universities with mutually complementary technology expertise on cleaner shipping. NAPA contributes to the consortium by providing insights on overall ship technical and operational performance globally,” Teemu Manderbacka, Lead R&D Engineer, NAPA Shipping Solutions, said.

The CPT consortium consists of six research organisations — University of Vaasa, Aalto University, Tampere University, Åbo Akademi University, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT — and nine companies — Wärtsilä Finland, AGCO Power, Meyer Turku, NAPA, Dinex Finland, Proventia, Geyser Batteries, Bosch Rexroth and APUGenius.

The total project volume is approximately €15 million, out of which €7.9 M is provided as Business Finland support. The rest is funded by the consortium’s members.