” Also , the ship is equipped with absorption coolers , to produce air-conditioning systems with cooling energy ,” Jantunen mentions .
Efficiency and automation of the airconditioning has also been improved to save energy .
Furthermore , what we have here is also the world ’ s most energy-efficient cruise ship ,” he recounts .
” Environmental emissions of the ship have been minimised . A lot of work has been done to optimise the hull shape of the vessel , in order to make the sailingresistance factors as minuscule as possible . Additionally , the ship has an air lubrication system to lower friction as the ship sails .
The energy consumption of the vessels systems is dynamically optimised . For this purpose , Meyer Turku ’ s own dynamic simulation model was used .
” The dynamic simulation model contains all the ship ’ s equipment and consumers , and it enables us to phase-optimize , already in the design , the energy-efficiency
“
Efficiency and automation of the air-conditioning has also been improved to save energy .
performance on the actual routes where the ship will be operating – in this case , particularly in Caribbean conditions .”
To further improve the energy-efficiency of the ship , the surplus energy of the LNG-fuelled engines will be utilised to produce steam for use in the steam turbine that produces six percent of the electrical power needed aboard the ship .
MORE SHIPS TO FOLLOW
Royal Caribbean International ’ s series of Icon-class cruise ships will be completed by two further vessels to be built by Meyer Turku shipyard and to be ready for use in 2025 and 2026 , respectively . Shipbuilding work for the second ship was already started a few months ago , both at Turku shipyard and – to produce the floating LNG fuel tank part for the ship – at the Neptune shipyard in Germany .
” The following two ships in the series will be built largely in the same way as the first platform , but some new developmental features may be added along the way ,” Jantunen expects .
For Icon of the Seas , a workforce of several thousand people took part in the shipbuilding project , some of them representing any of the almost 1 000 subcontractor companies involved .
The next step for finalising the Icon of the Seas will be to prepare for the imminent open-sea tests to be carried out in early summer of 2023 . Commissioning tests are already being conducted upon various technical equipment and devices . As an example , the propulsion systems
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