A shipping vessel left China for Brazil while sporting some new improvements last August—a pair of 123-feet-tall, solid “wings” retrofitted atop its deck to harness wind power for propulsion assistance. But after its six-week maiden voyage testing the green energy tech, the Pyxis Ocean MC Shipping Kamsarmax vessel apparently had many more trips ahead of it. Six months later, its owners at the shipping company, Cargill, shared the results of those journeys this week—and it sounds like the vertical WindWing sails could offer a promising way to reduce existing vessels’ emissions.
Using the wind force captured by its two giant, controllable sails to boost its speed, Pyxis Ocean reportedly saved an average of 3.3 tons of fuel each day. And in optimal weather conditions, its trips through portions of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans reduced fuel consumption by over 12 tons a day. According to Cargill’s math, that’s an average of 14 percent less greenhouse gas emissions from the ship. On its best days, Pyxis Ocean could cut that down by 37 percent. In all, the WindWing’s average performance fell within 10 percent ts designers’ computational fluid dynamics simulation predictions.
[Related: A cargo ship with 123-foot ‘WindWing’ sails has just departed on its maiden voyage.]
In total, an equally sized ship outfitted with two WindWings could annually save the same amount of emissions as removing 480 cars from roads—but that could even be a relatively conservative estimate, according to WindWing’s makers at BAR Technologies.
“[W]hile the Pyxis Ocean has two WindWings, we anticipate the majority of Kamsarmax vessels will carry three wings, further increasing the fuel savings and emissions reductions by a factor of 1.5,” BAR Technologies CEO John Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Source: A cargo ship’s ‘WindWing’ sails saved it up to 12 tons of fuel per day | Popular Science
Robin Edgar
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