Dutch maritime industry stands a lot to gain from renewing the way in which designs come into being.
The vision, creativity and determination of individual designers is often decisive for breakthroughs in the area of design technology. The Maritime Designer Award (former Wim Timmers Designer Award) is meant to stimulate innovation in maritime design.
The winner will be announced at the Maritime Awards Gala on 6 November in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The nominees are:
Joan den Akker
Worldwide, drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are required to keep climate change to a more or less acceptable level. As yet, the shipping industry has found no solution to this problem; international shipping is expected to be stuck with fossil fuels for the coming decades.
A promising way to tackle the problem is to capture the CO2 from the ship’s exhaust gases and store it onboard until the ship reaches a port where the CO2 can be unloaded. In his research, Joan den Akker found that by combining carbon capture with LNG as a fuel, far-reaching heat integration is enabled, thus making the system very energy efficient, requiring no external heat.
The captured CO2 is also of very high quality, so rather than storing it underground, it can be used for other purposes, such as “feeding” the greenhouses in the Westland.
Marijn Hage
Every submarine design is a delicate balance between different technical and operational aspects. Seeking this balance, in combination with the high level of system integration inherent to submarines, makes the creation of a new submarine design a complex iterative process.
Marijn Hage's Volume Estimation Tool (VET) is capable of determining a realistic starting point for the design of a diesel-electric submarine. The tool provides the submerged volume, main dimensions and subsection dimensions of the starting point design.
The tool can also be used to objectively compare different designs to each other and help develop further knowledge of submarine design.
Due to the tool’s modular nature, it can be expanded with new modules and functions. This will allow the VET to continue to be developed to keep up with advances in submarine technology. Although the tool has been developed for submarine design, the tool also has the potential, if adapted, to be used in the design of other ship types.
Picture: (from left to right): Marijn Hage, Maritime Designer Award Jury President Prof. J.J. Hopman and Joan den Akker.
Watch videos about the two nominees below.
