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Hamburg's Theodor Buschmann Shipyard has drawn a lot of interest for its new liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunker barge design, named TB-X, Motorship reports.

The new design is the brainchild of naval architect and industrial engineer Stephan Aumann, who is also the managing director of Theodor Buschmann Shipyard.

Speaking to Motorship, Aumann said initial interest in the barge design had been "surprisingly high" and that initial talks had been held with a major multi-purpose port operator in Hamburg; one German port authority was also interested as was another port and lock operator.

The TB-X barge project has been under way for approximately a year with Hamburg-based Marine Service GmbH acting as the turnkey partner for the vessel's LNG system.

Aumann said that the TB-X is "just the kind of solution required to close the gap in the LNG supply chain for ships" and that the vessel is the first of its kind to be designed and built specifically for the German infrastructure.

Aumann added that the design, especially in the area of the manifold, was compatible with other concepts under study, such as that for an LNG terminal in Hamburg.

Theodor Buschmann's design is an LNG bunker barge with vacuum insulated C-type tanks and with an LNG capacity of 100 cubic metres (cbm) to 900 cbm.

In terms of storage capacity, Aumann said: "The sky is the limit and we will build whatever size the customer needs".

As the LNG tank will determine the dimensions of the barge, Aumann told Motorship that it was difficult to fix dimensions at this stage. However, he said that the vessel would probably be around 50 metres long and 15 metres wide.

Aumann added that it would be easy to adapt the push barge design to individual requirements and that it could include a self-propelled propulsion system or supplied as a jack-up or stationary port LNG fuel station.