Wärtsilä unveils new gas-only engine
The Wärtsilä 31SG pure gas engine is now available for marine applications (Source: Wärtsilä)
Wärtsilä has launched a pure gas engine for marine applications, called Wärtsilä 31SG.
Until now, the company has pursued a dual-fuel strategy for its gas-burning engines but, it says, the new engine, based on the existing Wärtsilä 31 platform, will reduce the total cost of ownership and the environmental footprint of vessels operating in regions with access to a developed gas bunkering infrastructure.
The lean-burn, spark ignition engine was introduced for land-based applications in 2017. Since then, the company has delivered more than 1,800 engines operating for 37 million running hours in shoreside energy market applications.
Wärtsilä claims that the engine is ideally suited for hybrid applications because it provides high thermal efficiency and lower investment costs to offset the additional cost of energy storage. Pairing the Wärtsilä 31SG with battery packs also enables design for redundancy and high system efficiency, the company said.
The latest development comes as part of Wärtsilä’s strategy of cutting the greenhouse gas emissions of its gas engines by 15% between 2015 and 2020.
