By Ao Yangli

Carnival Corporation ordered a third LNG-powered Cruise ship for its affiliated AIDA Cruises, construction of the series’ first LNG-powered Cruise ship AIDAnova is well under way,operation is projected at H2 this year and this will be the global first LNG-powered Cruise ship.

LNG fuel is one of important clean energy sources and application of LNG power has become one of the future development trends of shipbuilding technology. As the global first cruise company selecting LNG power scheme for Cruise ship, Carnival Corporation laid cornerstone for LNG fuel innovation in the Cruise ship field. However, Cruise ship, dubbed as “Pearl on the Crown”in the shipbuilding industry, itself is a high-tech and highly difficult ship,adopting LNG will further increase Cruise ship construction difficulty and cost.This brings pressure on the Cruise ship builder, raises even higher requirement and brings about hindrance to LNG power technology spread in the Cruise ship sector.

Carnival Sets off Cruiser Revolution

In 2015 Carnival Corporation for the first time test-proved the feasibility of application of LNG fuel by Cruise ship, its affiliated AIDAsol Cruise ship successfully obtained low-emission power from a floating LNG hybrid power barge during its call at Hamburg,Germany and this was the first time LNG fuel was used in a Cruise ship.

In 2016 Carnival Corporation AIDAprima Cruise ship successfully completed LNG fuel trial operation and became the global first Cruise ship that uses dual fuel in port operation. Port operation time of a Cruise ship accounts for 40% of its total operation time, and this is undoubtedly one of important breakthroughs for boosting green development of the Cruise ship industry.

Then, Carnival Corporation ordered two LNG powered Cruise ships AIDAnova and Costa Smeralda for its affiliated AIDA Cruises and Costa Cruises respectively. AIDAnova Cruise ship construction commenced in February 2017, it is now well under way and delivery for operation is predicted for H2 this year. The cruiser will then become the global first fully LNG-powered Cruise ship.

The delivery and use of the first LNG-powered Cruise ship will unveil the LNG-powered Cruise ship era and become a milestone event in LNG-powered Cruise ship and even LNG-powered ship development and will further boost LNG fuel application in the large transport ship sector.

The application of LNG fuel accords with the environmental protection requirement and generates economic benefit to Cruise ships. Cruise ship operators mainly face the developed country market, ship emission control rules in these countries are more advanced, hence higher requirements for exhaust emission control of Cruise ships;green and environmental protection concept embodied in the LNG power application helps the cruiser company attract tourists.

Shang Jiafa, an engineer with the China Shipbuilding Industry Economic and Market Research Center, believed that Carnival Corporation took the lead in building LNG-powered Cruise ship manifested its determination to vigorously boost clean energy revolution, played an exemplary role and set up an industry benchmark for other cruiser companies adopting LNG fuel. So far, Carnival Corporation has ordered 9 LNG-powered Cruise ships for 4 cruiser companies,Caribbean ordered 2 LNG-powered Cruise ships, thus bringing existing orders of LNG-powered Cruise ships to 11 ships.

Shang Jiafa said the increasing order is only a beginning, LNG power has won favor of two world cruiser company giants, the applications of LNG and other clean energy sources in Cruise ships will gradually expand and more Cruise ships will adopt fuel cells, sails and other clean energy sources.

LNG Powered Cruisers Face Obstacles

LNG fuel is facing technological and cost obstacles in the Cruise ship application.

As a typical representative of the high-end equipment manufacturing industry, Cruise ship construction is highly difficult, involving high technical content. It is a systems engineering integrating modern industry and modern urban construction, with construction difficulty by far higher than aircraft carrier and large LNG carrier. Compared with an ordinary large ship, an Cruise ship applying LNG power will become more complicated and more technically challenging.

An expert with the Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co Ltd said that as an emerging ship power fuel in the recent dozen years, LNG has been a key research direction of research institutions and shipyards, LNG fuel has been extensively applied in ultra-large container ships and oil tankers, raising the technical threshold of relevant ship type construction. Cruise ship has its uniqueness and application of LNG power will certainly increase technical and construction difficulty.

The expert said the “cargo”carried by the Cruise ship is passengers,normal operation of the cruiser power system must be maintained if full safety is to be be guaranteed, and this puts forward ever higher requirements for LNG combustion stability and reliability. LNG fuel is an combustible material, hence maintenance and protection must be done well in gas filling, gas supply, gas storage and gas consumption. At the same time,one of the Cruise ship characteristics is complete utilization of onboard space to distribute entertainment facilities, improve entertainment experience of passengers;due to large volume of LNG storage tanks, how to minimize LNG storage tank occupancy of onboard space is also a challenge for LNG powered cruiser design.

Application of LNG power technology will increase construction cost of Cruise ship and this is yet another obstacle to LNG powered Cruise ship development.According to Shang Jiafa, LNG powered ship requires provision of LNG power engine, LNG fuel tank and LNG fuel supply system related special equipment,and this requires increasing investment in construction, bound to increase construction cost. An industry player estimated compared with a traditional diesel powered ship, LNG powered ship construction cost will increase by 10%-20%, and for high-tech and high value-added Cruise ship, increase in construction cost will be enormous.Moreover, application of LNG fuel will change design and layout of traditional ship form design and raises even higher requirements for safety such as ship fire prevention and explosion prevention.It’s worth noting that LNG fuel price is largely affected by the international energy market and its economic applicability will be affected in circumstances of oil price fluctuations and supply-demand relation changes.

Affected by high construction cost,incomplete infrastructure and other factors, real ship application of LNG power is fairly few, there are only 110-plus LNG power ships on the globe,largely concentrated in LNG carriers,coastal passenger ferries, offshore engineering vessels, etc. According to incomplete statistics, as of the end of February of 2018, global Cruise ship orders at hand amounted to 95 ships,with 17 of them being LNG power Cruise ships.

Shang Jiafa held the principal goal of China’s propelling cruiser construction is early grasp of cruiser construction technology and realization of independent construction of Cruise ships. At next stage after realization of independent construction, building LNG power Cruise ships will become an important direction for LNG power Cruise ships to cater to LNG powered ship development trend. Meanwhile,as Chinese shipbuilding enterprises accumulate more experience in other large LNG powered ship construction,Chinese LNG power Cruise ship development will speed up. An expert with Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding said Carnival Corporation has been promoting application and development of cruiser clean power and Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding will build clean powered cruiser in due course during future cooperation with shipowners.