Monday, April 6, 2009

La Naval shipyard, of the Spanish shipbuilding group CNN builds a fall pipe type ship 

Last February La Naval shipyard, from Sestao, near Bilbao, launched the ship "Simon Stevin", of fall pipe type, having a double mission, rock dumping in water depths up to 1.700 m, and, at the other hand, deep water mineral mining. Rock dumping is devoted to marine works such as protection of submarine cables and pipes, sea bottom refilling in underwater works, etc.



This type of ship is a new one in Spanish shipbuilding and only a few of them are in operation worldwide.






The shipowner is the Belgian group Jan de Nul, a big client of La Naval, which has built several suction dredgers for this owner and has under construcion other two units, one of them a sister ship to the "Cristobal Colón", the largest dredger ever built in the world, whose maiden voyage was recently informed in my blog "Oteando desde Getxo"
(Scanning from Getxo).





The name of the new fall pipe vessel is to honour Simon Stevin, the great Flemish scientific and engineer, born at Bruges in the XVI century, who contributed with many inventions and technologies, some of them directly connected to shipbuilding.








 



Main particulars of "Simon Stevin" ship are as follows:
  • Length overall 191,50 m
  • Breadth 40,00 m
  • Depth 13,20 m
  • Draugth loaded 8,50 m
  • Deadweight 32.500 t
  • Speed 15,50 knots
  • Crew 70 persons


Propulsion
  • 4 azimuth propellers, 4.500 Kw each
  • 2 retractable azimuthing thrusters, 2.000 Kw each
Electric generators
  • 5 diesel, 3.300 Kw each













It is outstanding the powerfull dynamic positioning system of this vessel, DP2 to Bureau Veritas class, as required to afford a precise rock dumping, what is achieved through the mentioned propellers fore and aft.



The flexible and retractable fall pipe system allows to lay stones on the sea bed with a high precision, up to a 1.700 m water depth at a rate of 2.000 t/h. Rocks, up to 0,40 m size, are shifted by conveyor belts from both holds, fore and aft of central pipe station, and falling up to sea bottom to be sited though sophisticated monitoring and positioning systems.


The design of the specialiced fall pipe systems and related services has been carried out by the firm Vuyk Engineering Rotterdam B.V., in Rotterdam.


The fabrication of the fall pipe is being carried out in Belgium and shall be erected on board in a short date.


On this video you can appreciate the operation of a similar, smaller ship owned by Van Oord, Dredging and Marine Contractors company.



When this ship be completed I hope I can visit her to get a complete information about her systems and arrangements, that only have been outlined above.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Simon Stevin vessel is said to be largest fall-ship in the world and that too heavier because of its load capacity about 33,500t. More details & images can be found here.

Juan José Azpiroz said...

@Michael Jordan
Many thanks for your additional information about this remarkable ship.

Unknown said...

You are welcome Juan!