Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. (DSIC) has delivered the wind-assisted Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) New Aden to China Merchant Energy Shipping Co., Ltd (CMES).

The vessel has an overall length of about 333 meters, a moulded width of 60 meters and a moulded depth of 30 meters. The designed draft is 20.5 meters. This VLCC is classified by CCS (China Classification Society) as meeting the requirements of Harmonized Common Structural Rules (HCSR), the latest oxynitride and oxysulfide emission standards, Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) and Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI), the EU Inventory of Hazardous Materials and ship recycling and the latest requirements that given by major oil giants.

The ship is equipped with two pairs of new generation rigid wing sails which were developed by DSIC’s R&D team; CMES, CCS, Guangwei Composite Materials Co., Ltd. jointly participated in the development.

The raised sail has a height of 40 meters, total areas of single sail surface is about 1200 square meters. The sail blade is made of carbon fibre composite as a consequence of their low weight, high strength and good corrosion resistance to marine environment; the high autonomous intelligent control system significantly improves the sail’s adaptability to the complex operating conditions of the vessel and the sail operation efficiency.

The Aerofoil Sails Intelligent Control system supports one-button sail-raising and auto optimized rotation and can adjust the control strategy online according to real time data such as the navigation environment.

This system can monitor the status of power supply, communication self check, hydraulic lifting and electric rotation, so that a fault source can be quickly located. This system is user-friendly and includes customer’s concerns as end-users had chances to participate in both developments of operational panel and intelligent auxiliary function module.

Taking the Middle East - Far East route at economic speed as an example, the use of sails is expected to achieve an average fuel saving of more than 9.8%, and corresponding CO₂ emission reduction of more than 2900 tons.