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This New Fuel-Saving Auto-Kite By Airseas Has Been Installed On A Cargo Ship For The First Time

Airseas is a French company that has installed its first half-size automated Seawing kite to a cargo ship chartered by Airbus. The trials will begin in January and go on for six months. The full-size kite is estimated to save up to 20 percent of fuel burn and emissions.

The US$30-million, 154-meter (505-ft) Ville de Bordeaux, owned and operated by Louis Dreyfus, is currently on a long-term lease to Airbus. It is being used to move large aircraft structures between its distributed manufacturing plants around Europe and its final assembly plant in Toulouse.

Now, a 500-square-meter (5,400-sq-ft) parafoil kite will be fit in it with all the deck and bridge equipment needed to operate the Seawing system. The Seawing deploys automatically, first emerging from storage on a trolley, then rising up from the deck on a mast to catch the wind, and finally being released on a long cable to grab the steady, strong winds over about 200 m (656 ft) above sea level.

It starts a figure-eight trajectory at a speed over 100 km/h (62 mph), monitored and controlled by an automated system running on the ship that’s programmed to place the kite for maximum traction power. The Seawing computers also interface with the ship’s navigation systems, monitoring forward wind conditions and re-routing the ship to take the most efficient path possible without affecting its arrival time.

The kite that will be used in trials is half the size of the 1,000-sq-m (10,800-sq-ft) kite that’ll eventually be deployed for commercial operation. It is expected that this kite will cut both diesel consumption and shipping emissions by a massive 20 percent. Germany’s Skysails Group has tested similar devices up to 400 sq m (4,300 sq ft) in size, finding they replace up to 2 MW of power from the main engines under favorable wind conditions.

Airseas says the Seawing system can be retrofitted to virtually all ship types, requiring only about two days for the conversion and not getting in the way of cargo operations in port.

It has been found that an 8,000-TEU container ship burns around 225 tons of fuel a day at 24 knots (27.6 mph, 44.4 km/h), but can reduce that by 33 percent if it travels a little slower at 21 knots (24.2 mph, 38.9 km/h).

“A decade ago, we embarked on the ambitious project of channeling our unique aviation expertise towards creating a cleaner and more sustainable shipping industry,” says Vincent Bernatets, CEO and Co-Founder of Airseas and a former engineer at Airbus. “Today, I am beyond proud to see that vision becoming reality, with our first Seawing ready to make a tangible difference for our planet. This first installation marks a significant milestone not only for Airseas, but also for wind and other renewable propulsion technologies in general. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, the world needs to see a drastic reduction in carbon emissions now. In shipping, we can achieve this by using the full set of tools we have available to us today. Wind propulsion is one of these and will play an essential role in helping shipping achieve its much-needed decarbonization transition.”

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