Woodward L’Orange Offers Flexible Engine Technology to Marine Industry

[By: Woodward L’Orange]

Woodward L’Orange is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of injection systems and engine components for large diesel engines. It is now offering the marine industry flexible engine technology towards achieving compliance with a 50% greenhouse gas target set for 2050.

The increasing use of green hydrogen forms the basis to cost-competitive synthetic fuels with a zero carbon footprint. The use of these fuels in a broad range of power generation and transportation applications will achieve a dramatic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Woodward L’Orange is at the forefront of future proofing diesel engines. The company is developing new fuel injection technologies to meet the needs of the marine industry that include hydrogen and other Power-to-X (PtX) fuels. This allows users to find the optimal and cost-effective solution bridging to Power-to-X fuels.

There are a number of PtX fuels currently in development being produced from green hydrogen. Among them methanol, ammonia and the direct use of hydrogen are among the most promising. Each fuel has its advantages and disadvantages and therefore fits to some applications better than to others. Woodward L’Orange has designed a new range of PtX fuel injectors that can be used with a variety of new fuels including hydrogen, methane, ammonia and methanol.

Enrico Bärow of Woodward L’Orange sees the development and provision of new engine technologies and the choice of specialized fuel injection equipment offers a wide variety of solutions and a new future for use in industrial applications.

“Environmental concerns and the requirement to comply with new regulations are driving a real change across all industries. By choosing a flexible engine technology today, our customers are discovering the benefits of fuel bridging that enables them to use different fuels during the lifetime of their engines. There are tangible benefits in emissions and costs and when new fuels are making its way into the economy, they will be at the forefront of achieving compliance and gaining a competitive advantage in their industries. Our range of new fuel injectors enables the use of different fuels without having to change a complete engine. This is the way forward as customers using engines as their primary power source try to balance the requirements of regulators and their own customers.”

Woodward L’Orange is extending and developing its portfolio of injection technologies to serve the broad range of PtX applications. The focus was the development of injection technologies, which can handle most low viscosity fuels, either gaseous or liquid whichever is likely to replace existing fuels in the next few decades. The product range includes medium pressure single fuel injection systems, which are able to inject at pressures ranging from a few tens of bars to up to several hundred bars. Besides, Woodward L’Orange is able to offer a new high-pressure dual fuel injector family. This allows the injection of both, diesel fuel at up to 2200 bar and a second/PtX fuel at 600 bar directly into the cylinder. This allows a diesel-like characteristic of the engine at highest efficiencies and power densities. The engine can be operated with both fuels at 100% load.