Almost ready to roll: 8-cylinder gas engine on the test stand

The new 8-cylinder MTU gas engine for marine applications has been humming away on Test Stand no. 146 in the new development test facility at MTU Plant 1 in Friedrichshafen since the beginning of June 2019: It is being put through its paces before the Constance Municipal Works (Stadtwerke Konstanz GmbH) will take delivery of it and a second example of these new engines at the end of the year. From 2020, the engines will be propelling a new ferry operated by Bodensee-Reederei which runs passenger services on Lake Constance.

The “little brother” of MTU’s already series production-ready 16V 4000 gas engine will be available with a power rating of between 750 and 1,000 kW. Starting in 2020, Rolls-Royce Power Systems and the Constance Municipal Works will be trialing two 746 kW engines in a new ferry set to ply the route between Constance and Meersburg. This will make it one of the first inland passenger vessels in Europe to be powered by high-speed pure gas engines. The fuel used is liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“We are very much looking forward to using the MTU gas engines from our long-standing partner Rolls-Royce Power Systems in this new addition to our fleet,” said Dr. Norbert Reuter, CEO of Stadtwerke Konstanz GmbH.
Even without exhaust gas aftertreatment, the MTU mobile gas engine is already well below the thresholds stipulated by current emission guidelines (IMO III) – indeed, particulate mass is below the verification limit, and nitrogen oxide emissions are very low.

MTU unveiled its mobile gas engines for marine propulsion back in September 2016, and meanwhile prototypes have successfully racked up well in excess of more than 8,000 hours on the test stand. The first pre-production 16-cylinder engines were delivered at the end of 2017 to shipyard Strategic Marine in Vietnam which installed the engines in catamarans being built for Dutch shipping company Doeksen.