World News
HHI Designs In-House Rotor Sail Wind Propulsion System
South Korean shipyard Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. (HHI) has designed its own rotor-sail wind propulsion system.
Known as the Hi-Rotor, HHI Sunday said it has now received design approval for the system from the Korean Register of Shipping (KR).
Rotor sails, also known as flettner-rotors, are tall, rotating cylinders that use the Magnus effect to create propulsion.
HHI says its system can reduce fuel consumption and associated carbon emissions by about 6 to 8 percent - roughly in-line with similar systems form other manufactures.
HHI says a differentiator for its Hi-Rotor system is that it uses a reduction gear method for the mechanism.
"[T]hat connects the electric motor with the rotor, for improved safety compared to the belt-type method of existing commercial products," the company says.
Rotor sails are far from new technology, with examples of early versions of such systems dating back almost 100 years.
In the modern era, for almost a decade Norsepower Oy Ltd. (Norsepower) has been perhaps the most prominent name operating in the rotor-sail space, whose systems appear on vessels operated by the likes of Scandlines, Vale, and Maersk Tankers.
If nothing else, HHI's development of it's own in-house rotor-sail system is a sign that interest is growing in the technology and wind propulsion systems in general.
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