Noticia

Founded in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1963, the EMPA is a non-profit professional organization which represents around 4,500 maritime pilots from eighteen EU countries as well as Georgia, Montenegro, Norway, the UK, Turkey and Ukraine. There are also delegations of pilots from the United States, Brazil and Morocco.

Its main goals are promoting the professionalism, training and safety of maritime pilots, and working with all parties interested in the correct and sustainable performance of port activities.

The event, which is returning to Italy after 20 years, and whose theme is “Pilotage - The Value of Human Capital”, is being put on in partnership with Fedepiloti, the Italian Federation of Port Pilots, with the participation of the IMPA (International Maritime Pilots’ Associations) and the Italian Coast Guard. FPT Industrial was also Main Partner of the gala evening held on 28 April in the splendid setting of Palazzo Brancaccio, an historic residence on Rome’s Oppian Hill.

In this prestigious location, the Brand showed off its C90 650 EVO Hybrid marine engine, unveiled at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September. The propulsion parallel electric hybrid system, whose electric motor is coaxial to the diesel propulsion system, fruit of the company’s partnership with Vulkan, a leading player in the sector, has been designed with the goal of lower emissions and exceptional comfort as well as a reduction in costs, in addition to the ability to cruise in 100% electric mode, and is therefore also of great interest for pilot boats in service in European ports.

The solution on show to European professional maritime pilots features a C90 650 EVO diesel engine, clutch for engaging and disengaging the engine, an axial flow synchronous three-phase permanent magnet e-machine, frequency converter, marine inverter, mechanical interface and Vulkan sound/vibration isolation system. The engine can be fuelled with biofuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), which allows for reductions in CO2 emissions of up to 90% compared to traditional diesel oil.

Like all FPT Industrial marine powerpacks, the C90 650 EVO Hybrid is also equipped with intelligent systems which allow remote monitoring of the motor’s performance, allowing for preventive fault detection and, on request, monitoring of the use of the vessel, providing precise, real-time information on its position, fuel consumption, engine load and hours of use.

“We have completed and refined the development of our N67 and C90 marine engines in partnership with port pilots,” says Guglielmo Tummarello, Head of Dealer Sales Europe at FPT Industrial. “We have indeed carried out specific product validation tests and accumulated thousands of hours of testing of our engines installed in pilots’ vessels to be sure of releasing a high-performance product which meets their actual performance and use case requirements, and to meet the highest standards of quality and reliability.”

• MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE FPT INDUSTRIAL C90 650 EVO HYBRID PROPULSION SYSTEM
Inline six-cylinder, 8.7 liter diesel engine
Maximum power: 478 kW at 2,530 rpm

• Clutch
The system uses an electromagnetic clutch for engaging and disengaging the diesel engine, managed by a dedicated control unit located between the engine and the e-machine.

• E-machine
The e-machine is an axial flow synchronous three-phase permanent magnet type (200 kW at 2,000 rpm, with just 170 mm of axial length). The result is a powerful and extremely compact hybrid module.

• Mechanical interface and sound/vibration isolation
Two Vulkan flexible couplings – one between the engine flywheel and the clutch, the other between the e-machine and the inverter - ensure optimum vibrotorsional isolation for the entire system; the joints and the clutch are installed in specifically designed housings, ensuring the necessary rigidity and compactness of the entire hybrid transmission.