MS ''Megastar'' is a fast ro-ro/passenger (ro-pax) ferry built by the

Meyer Turku Meyer Turku Oy is a Finnish shipbuilding company located in Turku, Finland Proper. The company is fully owned by German shipbuilder Meyer Werft GmbH. The main products are cruise ships and cruiseferries. The shipbuilding facility is Perno shi ...

shipyard in

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

, for the

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

n shipping company

Tallink Tallink () is an Estonian shipping company operating Baltic Sea cruiseferries and ropax ships from Estonia to Finland, Estonia to Sweden to Sweden and Finland to Sweden. It is the largest passenger and cargo shipping company in the Baltic Sea ...

. The 230 million euro vessel is the first ship in Tallink's fleet to use

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the v ...

(LNG) as fuel.

Construction

The construction of Tallink's new car ferry began 4 August 2015 and the keel was laid on 9 February 2016. On 1 July 2016, the ship was given the name ''Megastar'', chosen from 21,550 naming proposals following a public naming contest, by Finnish President

Tarja Halonen Tarja Kaarina Halonen (; born 24 December 1943) is a Finnish politician who served as the 11th president of Finland, and the first woman to hold the position, from 2000 to 2012. She first rose to prominence as a lawyer with the Central Organisa ...

. The vessel was floated out on 15 July and the sea trials were scheduled for late 2016. The ship was delivered on 24 January 2017.

Technical details

''Megastar'' is powered by three 12-cylinder

Wärtsilä Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (), trading internationally as Wärtsilä Corporation, is a Finnish company which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include technol ...

12V50DF and two

6-cylinder The engine configuration describes the fundamental operating principles by which internal combustion engines are categorized. Piston engines are often categorized by their cylinder layout, valves and camshafts. Wankel engines are often categoriz ...

Wärtsilä 6L50DF four-stroke

dual-fuel A flexible-fuel vehicle (FFV) or dual-fuel vehicle ( colloquially called a flex-fuel vehicle) is an alternative fuel vehicle with an internal combustion engine designed to run on more than one fuel, usually gasoline blended with either ethan ...

generating sets. While capable of running on

marine diesel oil Marine Diesel Oil (MDO) is a type of fuel oil and is a blend of gasoil and heavy fuel oil, with more gasoil than intermediate fuel oil used in the maritime field. Marine Diesel Oil is also called "Distillate Marine Diesel". MDO is widely used by med ...

(MDO), the engines will primarily use

(LNG) as fuel. This reduces both

sulphur oxide Sulfur oxide refers to many types of sulfur and oxygen containing compounds such as SO, SO2, SO3, S7O2, S6O2, S2O2, etc. Sulfur oxide (SO''x'') refers to one or more of the following: * Lower sulfur oxides (S''n''O, S7O2 and S6O2) * Sulfur monox ...

(SOx) and

nitrogen oxide Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Charge-neutral * Nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen(II) oxide, or nitrogen monoxide *Nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen(IV) oxide * Nitrogen trioxide (), o ...

(NOx) emissions, and allows the vessel to comply with

IMO IMO or Imo may refer to: Biology and medicine * Irish Medical Organisation, the main organization for doctors in the Republic of Ireland * Intelligent Medical Objects, a privately held company specializing in medical vocabularies * Isomaltooligos ...

Tier III emission limits as well as the additional restrictions of the Baltic Sea

Sulphur Emission Control Area Emission control areas (ECAs), or sulfur emission control areas (SECAs), are sea areas in which stricter controls were established to minimize airborne emissions from ships as defined by Annex VI of the 1997 MARPOL Protocol. The emissions specif ...

. The gas fuel is stored in two cryogenic storage tanks which, unlike in the previous LNG-fueled cruiseferry ''Viking Grace'', are located inside the hull of the vessel, below the main deck. The propulsion system is diesel-electric, meaning that instead of being mechanically coupled to the twin propeller shafts, the main engines form a power plant which produces electricity for all electrical consumers ranging from propulsion motors to auxiliary systems and hotel functions. This allows starting and stopping engines depending on power demand and improves the

fuel efficiency Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the ratio of effort to result of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier (fuel) into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, ...

as the engines can run at their nominal power.Megastar-laivasta: Moottorit
Tallink. The service speed of the vessel is .

Service history

After its completion and handover to Tallink the vessel began providing from late January 2017 a six times a day Tallinn-Helsinki-Tallinn service.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Megastar 2016 ships Ships built in Turku Ferries of Estonia