The world's largest ship

Construction of the world’s largest ship is picking up speed. Recently, the very first propeller was loaded onto a Maersk Line container ship in Hamburg bound for the DSME shipyard in South Korea. The shipyard will build all 20 of the Triple-E vessels, the first to be delivered in July 2013. 

With a diameter of 10m and a weight of about 70 tons, the giant, four-bladed propeller for the first Triple-E was loaded onto Maersk Salalah. Two of these propellers will provide the thrust for the 400-metre-long Triple-E’s.

Instead of one large six-blade propeller, like the one seen on the left in the photo, research at Maersk Maritime Technology has concluded that the Triple-E’s will be more energy efficient with two four-bladed propellers. 

Manufactured by Mecklenburger Metallguss GmbH (MMG) in Germany, the propellers are cast in moulds with 500 tonnes of weight placed on top to counter the buoyancy of alloy as hot as 1,190-degree Celsius. 

The construction of ten Triple-E vessels, each capable of carrying 18,000 twenty foot containers, will put Maersk Line at the helm of change. The size and capacity of these vessels, at 400 metres long and 59 metres wide, will help reduce energy consumption and lower CO2 emissions.

Facts at a glance:
• A Triple-E class vessel is equipped with a waste heat recovery system, saving up to 10% of main engine power. This equals the average annual electrical consumption of 5,000 European households.
• The Triple-E class travels 184 kilometres using 1 kWh of energy per ton of cargo, whereas a jumbo jet travels half a kilometre using the same amount of energy per ton of cargo.
• The vessel can carry 18,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU). If all these containers were to be put on a train - it would need to be 110 km long - and if they were put on top of each other they would almost reach beyond the stratosphere (47 km).