Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd (WinGD) is pleased to announce that French shipping line CMA CGM, based in Marseille, has chosen WinGD’s largest, 92cm bore, dual-fuel low-speed engine to power what are presently the largest containerships ever ordered.

The 12-cylinder X92DF engines will power a series of nine “mega” containerships, each with a record capacity of 22,000 TEU.

The vessels ordered by CMA CGM will be built at the yards of Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding and Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding.

They are due to enter service in 2020 on routes between Asia and Europe and are designed to have the potential to sail complete Asia-to-Europe voyages on liquefied natural gas.

The engines will be rated 63,840kW at 80rpm, making them the most powerful gas and dual-fuel engines ever built.

The regulations already met by the WinGD X-DF dual-fuel engines include the limits on NOx in Emission Control Areas (ECAs) imposed by IMO Tier III and the 0.5% limit on sulphur in fuel which will be introduced in 2020, as well as possible limits on particulates.

Looking at the overall Total Cost of Ownership of the new vessels as well as operating expenditure, capital expenditure is also reduced because the emissions levels of WinGD X-DF engines are achieved without the need to install exhaust gas after treatment systems.

This will also be helped by the application of the low-pressure gas admission feature of the X-DF engines, which uses less expensive, more energy-efficient gaseous fuel compression equipment compared with low-speed dual-fuel engines requiring high pressure gas injection.

WinGD has so far received more than 75 orders for X-DF engines since their introduction to the market at the end of 2013.