Dutch shipbuilder Kooiman Marine Group said it has secured a contract from Van Oord to build two Water Injection Dredgers (WID) for delivery scheduled in the first half of 2024.
The order follows the previous deliveries of the WIDs Maas and the Mersey delivered in mid-2021.
“The experience with the first two vessels motivated several changes applying to this subsequent order,” said Peter Bijkerk, Project Manager on behalf of Van Oord. “The most notable modifications involve a larger accommodation, more battery power and the fendering. These modifications will increase the vessel’s deployability still further.”
In the design of the Maas and the Mersey extensive attention was devoted to optimizing the vessels’ energy consumption and operation, thus reducing CO2 emissions.
The Maas and Mersey were developed by Kooiman Engineering in cooperation with Van Oord. Two electrically driven pumps force water through the U-shaped water injection pipe located at the rear of the vessel. This pipe injects water into the bottom, loosening sediment which is carried away by the current. Several water-injection methods are available, giving the vessels optimum deployability.
The vessels measure 43.07 x 12.40 meters (length and width including the water injection pipe) and have a draught of 3.4 meters.
The enlarged battery pack enables the diesel engines in the new dredgers to be utilized optimally, increasing fuel efficiency while reducing emissions and noise. “In fact, the noise levels were already fine,” noted Maarten Kooiman, Project Leader on behalf of Kooiman Marine Group. “During the trial run with the Maas and the Mersey, noise levels in the accommodation and wheelhouse turned out to be so low that we could virtually comply with the highest possible noise requirements of the classification society, despite the fact that this was not a requirement.”
