What does a wind assisted oil tanker looks like?

A wind assisted VLCC (very large crude oil carrier) has been designed within the OPTIWISE project.

One of the goals in OPTIWISE (Optimized Wind Supported Vessels) research project, was to design and validate three demo cases with wind assisted propulsion: a bunker vessel, a tanker and a cruise vessel. RISE “SSPA Maritime Centre” in collaboration with OceanWings’ Wingsails and Euronav has been developing an oil tanker, equipped with OceanWing’s Oceanwing wind propulsion solution.

The Oceanwing 588 System is a two-elements wingsail with a 588 m2 area; several configurations with different position and number of sails have been tested for the wind assisted tanker, considering the efficiency of the sails, the risk of damage from green water and interference with other equipment locate on deck.

To challenge today’s state of the art vessels, several aspects of the tanker design have been analysed including the hydrodynamic design of the hull and appendages, the engine room and auxiliary generators configuration and some of the influence of the wind propulsion system in the IMO regulations.

Under the hydrodynamic point of view, different vessel’s main dimensions have been tested together with a larger rudder and the presence of fins to reduce the leeway angle.

The conventional setup of main and auxiliary configuration has been challenged, together with an investigation on the possibility of installing a controllable pitch propeller.

With the wind propulsion system some of the existing regulations are difficult to satisfy in a traditional way, therefore possible solutions have been discussed with expert from classification societies and are included in the tanker design.

The next step in the project is to assess the performance on typical VLCC trade routes in term of greenhouse gasses emissions and economics as well as the safety of the design using both numerical and experimental methods.