DEME orders new generation trailing suction hopper dredge

FEBRUARY 3, 2016 — Zwijndrecht, Belgium, headquartered dredging and hydraulic engineering specialist DEME has ordered a new generation trailing suction hopper dredge (TSHD) at Royal IHC, which will provide turnkey delivery of the entire vessel, though construction will take at the COSCO Guangdong shipyard, China, under Royal IHC’s supervision.

Named the Bonny River, the 15,000 cu.m dredge will be supplied with an extended suction pipe, and an additional suction pipe with heavy-duty rock draghead, enabling the vessel to operate in hard soil areas.

The Bonny River will be the first vessel in DEME’s fleet with a closed process water circuit. This minimizes the turbidity generated by overflow water and enables the vessel to dredge in environmentally vulnerable areas.

The hydrodynamic hull and the dual-fuel engines (diesel and LNG) ensure optimization of fuel consumption levels and a minimal CO2 footprint.

The dredge will carry a Green Passport and have a Clean Design classification

DEME says that it is ordering the vessel in response to the macroeconomic trend to extract maritime sand at greater depths and further offshore. A long suction pipe with a built-in submersible pump facilitates sand extraction from more than 100 m deep.

Thanks to its optimized hull design, the Bonny River, with its transport capacity of 24,000 tonnes, has a limited depth when loaded, making it highly suitable for coastal protection assignments, even in regions with shallow beaches.

An additional asset is the second, shorter suction pipe for dredging works on a harder seabed. By equipping the vessel with a 75 tonnes draghead, the Bonny River  ship can also remove hard soil that couldn’t be dredgedin the past.