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EPS TANKER ANALYZED TO EVALUATE OUTCOMES OF WIND-ASSISTED PROPULSION
DETAIL INFORMATION
A recent study aims to measure the positive effects of incorporating wind-assisted propulsion into ships while also creating a system to evaluate the technology's advantages in decreasing fuel use and emissions. The research was carried out on the Eastern Pacific Shipping product tanker Pacific Sentinel (50,322 dwt) in collaboration with the Global Center for Maritime Decarbonisation based in Singapore.
The study's authors emphasize that a major obstacle to adopting wind-assisted propulsion is the fundamentally inconsistent fuel savings from these systems. They mention that it relies on operational and environmental elements, including routing and weather circumstances. Although around 70 commercial ships globally are presently outfitted with various types of wind assistance technology, they observe that there is an absence of a standardized approach for measuring and validating performance. The recent study was among several that aims to tackle these problems.
In March 2025, the chemical tanker was equipped with three 22-meter (72-foot) suction sails. The manufacturer of the fully autonomous wind-assisted propulsion system (WAPS), bound4blue, stated it would assist the vessel in decreasing total energy usage, with anticipated energy savings of about 10 percent, depending on the vessel's route.