11,000 containers on ONE ship?
We import a few containers per month and from what I know of our freight forwarder, we are small business in container shipping. My forwarder’s biggest current client receives 100 containers per month into the country (they are a food wholesaler to supermarkets). Apparently it is only one type of product too, like beans or something.
Today I read about the Emma Maersk, a PS class container ship of the Maersk shipping company. It has a 5 storey high 14 cylinder engine producing over 100,000 horsepower, and can carry 11,000 x 20 foot containers.
Some of the other statistics are just as amazing… read on!
Interesting Stats on the Emma Maersk (Wikipedia):
Dimensions - length overall = 397 meters
- beam (width)= 56 meters
- Tonnage
- gross = 170,974 bt
- net = 55,396 nt
- deadweight (DWT) = 156,907 DWT
- Power
- 80,080 kW (109,000 hp) Wärtsilä 14RT-Flex96c
- plus 40,000 hp from five Caterpillar 8M32
- Speed
- more than 25.5 knots
- Crew
- The ship has accommodation for 30 people, though the normal crew is only 13.
- And how much does it cost to make? About $145 million!
More interesting shipping stats, courtesy of Maersk shipping:
If all containers in the world were lined up, it would create a container wall with a length of 108,000 km. This is a third of the way to the moon, equivalent to 18 times the length of the Great Wall of China or 2.7 times around the earth at the Equator.- The main engine of a PS-class vessel produces 109,000 horsepower, equal to that of 1,156 family cars.
- A PS-class vessel can carry 11,000 full 20-foot containers, equal to a train 71 kilometres long.
- The anchor of a PS-class vessel weighs 29 tons, equivalent to five adult African elephants.
- A PS-class vessel sails approximately 170,000 nautical miles every year, equal to 7.5 times around the world.
- In 2005 Maersk Line made 33,000 port calls – equivalent to almost four port calls per hour or one call every 15 minutes.
- In 2006 Maersk Line made 44,000 port calls – equivalent to five port calls per hour or one call every 12 minutes.
- Combined, the accommodation and bridge of a PS-class vessel are as high as a twelve storey building.
- A PS-class vessel is equipped with over 40,000 metres of pipes. If you lined them up and ran the length of them, you would almost run a marathon.
- PS-class vessels are equipped with a waste heat recovery system, saving up to ten percent of main engine power. This equals the average annual electrical consumption of 5,000 European households.
- The newly developed, more environmentally friendly silicone paint used below the waterline on a PS-class vessel creates a streamlining effect, saving an estimated 1,200 tons of bunker fuel per year.
- If all the Maersk Line containers were stacked on top of each other they would reach approximately 2,500 kilometres high, equivalent to stacking 8,550 Eiffel Towers on top of each other.
Saving the best till last…
The engine, a Wartsila-Sulzer 14RT96-C turbocharged 2 stroke diesel engine is incredible. I am a bit of a car nut and I can appreciate engines so I find stats like this pretty cool.
(For the 14 cylinder version:)
- Engine weight : 2,300 tons (the crankshaft alone is 300 tons!)
- Engine height : 13.5 meters
- Engine length : 27 meters
- Cylinder bore : 96cm
- Stroke (length the piston travels up and down) : 2.5 meters
- Power produced per cylinder: 7,780 horsepower/ 5,720 kW
- RPM : 92-102
- Mean piston speed : 8.5 metres/second
References :
- http://people.bath.ac.uk/ccsshb/12cyl/
- http://www.maerskline.com
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk
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