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Caterpillar Marine has announced the first shipment of Cat® 3500 series marine gas engines from its Lafayette, Indiana manufacturing facility.

Five Cat G3516 marine engines were selected to power the Becker Marine Systems subsidiary, Hybrid Port Energy, LNG-Hybrid Barge - said to be the world’s first LNG-powered barge in the Port of Hamburg.

The LNG-Hybrid barge will provide clean and efficient shore power to cold ironing cruise ships and serve as a backup power provider for the local Hamburg electric power and heat grid.

The G3516 is a spark-ignited, gas engine specially designed to operate in commercial vessel applications. The solution is said to be compliant with the strict Marine Classification Societies requirements, SOLAS and is certified by Bureau Veritas. The gas-fuelled units will be capable of providing up to 7.75 MW of electric power. Cat dealer Zeppelin Power Systems led sales efforts on the project and will continue to support packaging and installation of the Cat power solutions.

"We are working very closely with the technical team from Zeppelin and Bureau Veritas to provide a customer solution which is not only safe and environmental friendly, but also very economical in regards to the lowest cost of operation," Chris Chenette, Caterpillar Large Power System marine product value manager, stated. "The G3516 marine engines represent a pinnacle in efficiency and peak performance, with the capability to handle the dynamic load profiles in typical vessel operations."

The base engine is the field-proven, land-based Cat G3516C Island Mode genset engine which is known for its best-in-class transient response. The G3516C is a vee-16 configuration, providing 1550 ekW @ 1,500 rpm. The fuel system is an inlet fumigated low pressure gas system. It is able to run at 100% power with gas qualities down to Methane Nr 70. The electronics and control system provide the reliability and safety that marine customers demand. Additionally, the first generator set packages recently completed and successfully passed the Bureau Veritas witness testing at the Zeppelin Power Systems facility in Achim, Germany.

Chenette added: "For this particular project, some changes to the engine were required in order to meet the strict marine classification society standards; however we were able to leverage many of the approved solutions from our current Cat 3500 type approved marine diesel engine."

"As the world leader in providing gas engine technology, Caterpillar has made a strong commitment to support the growing demand for LNG-fuelled solutions in the global marine industry. The Cat G3516C is just one product in our comprehensive LNG initiative," said Jason Spear, Caterpillar Marine product definition engineer. "We’re pleased to be able to leverage our deep expertise to engineer marine gas engines and deliver high-performing, value-add solutions to our diverse marine customers with varying operational needs."

Spear continued: "As part of our tactical new product introductions, we are bringing high speed dual fuel solutions to the market for customers who require the flexibility to operate on diesel in the event natural gas bunkers are not available. Our Cat LNG engines are a perfect complement to the recently-introduced MaK dual fuel engines in the 34 and 46 cm bore class. Moving into the future Caterpillar Marine will be able to offer a complete line of propulsion and auxiliary engines with configurations capable of using dual fuel or 100% natural gas."