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The "Vindskip," a futuristic container ship, uses the high sides of its container ships as sails, turning the whole vessel into a wind-assisted airfoil.
Designed by Lade AS, the Norwegian company says the hybrid merchant ship will have an LNG-powered engine could achieve fuel savings of 60 percent and reduce emissions by 80 percent.
Terje Lade, who developed the aerodynamic design, says the container ship works more like an airplane than a conventional sailing ship.
"VindSkip can almost sail into the wind, in this way it's more like an airplane," Lade said. "It uses apparent wind, or the sail wind, to generate pull in much the same way that an airplane will take off when it reaches a certain speed."
The ship would be able to point as high as 18 degrees into the wind, the vacuum created on the
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lee side of the vessel (the side sheltered from the wind) would be enough to propel the ship forward.
The container ship includes computer software, being developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services, which calculates the optimal sailing route based on the weather and prevailing winds.
"With this software, you input when you want to leave and when you want to arrive, the weather forecast is loaded into the program and then it calculates the best route," Lade said.
"This would be dynamically updated every day. At each waypoint it would check with the time arrival and tell the crew whether to speed up using the engines or slow down; it makes it very easy for the crew."
For more of the CNN story: www.cnn.com
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