By
Laura Hyde |
Winners of the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA) annual student competition for designing a safe affordable ferry will speak at Interferry’s 48th annual conference, which is being held in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 28-29 October 2024.
For this year’s WFSA competition, participants were asked to design a ro-pax vessel that could accommodate 150-200 passengers, space for cargo and 15 to 20 four-wheel vehicles, which could include lorries and trucks. Designers had to take into consideration the vessel’s intended route, a shallow-drafted stretch of the Niger River in southern Nigeria’s Anambra State, from Onitsha Jetty to Idah Jetty, and from Onitsha Jetty to Ndoni Jetty.
“The competition comes as Nigeria has rapidly created a robust and sustainable ferry system for the city of Lagos,” said Dr. Roberta Weisbrod, executive director of WFSA. “The question now is whether the inland waterways of Nigeria – the Niger River – could enjoy similar successes?”
First place in the competition went to a team from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology, ITS Surabaya, who designed an aluminium catamaran powered by compressed natural gas with alternative power sources including solar and batteries. The 50-metre vessel has an estimated cost of $2.7 million and the concept design used a precut method, with proposed construction in a shipyard in Port Harcourt. The vessel would be divided into several blocks for transportation by truck for assembly at a small yard near the Niger River. This team was awarded $5,000.
A team from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka came second and won $3,000. It designed a vessel with an aluminium catamaran hull, which would cost around $0.8 million to build. The vessel would use CNG as its main fuel to run the electric motor and use solar power to supplement this. Judges considered the concept of a tiltable propeller system as “brilliant” and the hydrokinetic turbine as “interesting”.
The second-place winning design would cost around $0.8 million to build
The third-place team, from Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta, designed a steel barge hull that could be built using the precut fabrication, which would cost an estimated $1.5 million. The vessel would be powered by diesel-CNG with solar power supplement. There would be fore and aft loading and the tilt-up thrustmaster is good for maintenance and repair. The team was awarded $1,000 prize money.
Third place went to a design by a team from Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta
“We congratulate all the winners and look forward to welcoming them on the main stage to accept their awards from the WFSA at our annual global conference,” said Mike Corrigan, CEO of Interferry.