Hyundai Heavy tops global 2-stroke engine production

South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. became the world’s first shipbuilder to have marked 200 million brake horsepower (bhp) in cumulative production of two-stroke engines on March 22.

The shipbuilding giant celebrated the milestone on Wednesday by starting a 74,720-bhp two-stroke engine at its plant in Ulsan, a southeastern port city in Korea. After 44 years of the company manufacturing two-stroke engines, its total production surpassed 200 million bhp on the day.

The 200 million-bhp production is equivalent to the output of 1.3 million units of Sonata, Hyundai Motor Co.’s midsize sedan, the shipbuilder said. Its rival HSD Engine Co. logged 120 million bhp last year. 

Hyundai Heavy established a 900,000 bhp-engine manufacturing plant in 1978, the largest single plant at the time, and surpassed 10 million bhp in cumulative production of two-stroke engines in 1992. In 2010, it became the world’s first shipbuilder to exceed 100 million bhp in production.

The Korean shipbuilder said its global two-stroke engine market share amounted to 36% last year, having topped the industry since 1989. Its HiMSEN engine also made up more than 30% of the global medium-speed four-stroke engine market last year, the company stated.

ECO-FRIENDLY MARINE ENGINES

Hyundai Heavy is boosting eco-friendly engine production as the company's future cash cow. More than 60% of the company's recent two-stroke engine orders use alternative fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), methanol and ethanol. 

The engine, which started on Wednesday, also uses eco-friendly dual fuel that operates with methanol and diesel.

The sustainable engine is equipped with a low-flashpoint supply system of Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (KSOE), the intermediate shipbuilding holding company of HD Hyundai.

The engine is set to be installed on Danish shipping giant Maersk’s 16,000 twenty-equipment unit (TEU) vessel, one of the world’s largest methanol-fueled containers at 350 meters long and 54 meters wide. 

Hyundai Heavy is also accelerating its hybrid engine development. Last December, in a collaboration with KSOE, it validated the performance of a 1.5 megawatt (MW) LNG-hydrogen HiMSEN engine that selectively uses diesel, LNG and fuel mixed with hydrogen that reduces the emissions of harmful gases.

Write to Seo-Woo Jang at suwu@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.