''Louhi'' (pennant number 999) is a Finnish multipurpose oil and chemical spill response vessel owned by the

Finnish Environment Institute The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) (, ) is a multidisciplinary research and expert institute under the Ministry of the Environment, Finland. SYKE has four office and research facilities in Helsinki, Oulu, Jyväskylä and Joensuu Joensu ...

(SYKE), but crewed and operated by the

Finnish Navy The Finnish Navy ( , ) is one of the branches of the Finnish Defence Forces. The navy employs 2,300 people and about 4,300 conscripts are trained each year. Finnish Navy vessels are given the ship prefix "FNS", short for "Finnish Navy ship", but ...

. The ship, ordered in 2007, was built by Uki Workboat in

Uusikaupunki Uusikaupunki (; , ) is a list of towns in Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality of Finland. It is located in the Southwest Finland regions of Finland, region, northwest of Turku and south of Pori. The municipality has a pop ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, and entered service in May 2011.

History

Development and construction

The development of the new multipurpose vessel began on 25 May 2003 when the Ministry of Transport and Communications appointed a work group to investigate the technical requirements and economic aspects of building a new multipurpose

icebreaker An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...

capable of combating oil and chemical spills around the year. The amount of oil transported in the

Gulf of Finland The Gulf of Finland (; ; ; ) is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland to the north and Estonia to the south, to Saint Petersburg—the second largest city of Russia—to the east, where the river Neva drains into it. ...

had increased from a mere 15 million tons per year in the early 1990s to 69 million tons in 2003 and was expected to reach 130 million tons by 2010 after the new Russian oil terminals became operational, increasing the risk of a large spill in the vulnerable sea area considerably. While Finland already had a fleet of vessels with oil recovery equipment, none of them were capable of collecting spilled oil efficiently in heavy seas or in ice. The new multipurpose icebreaker would be designed to be capable of recovering spilled oil and chemicals in both open water and ice conditions, extinguishing shipboard fires and emergency towing of the largest merchant ships operating in the Gulf of Finland. The new vessel would also have sufficient icebreaking capability to assist

oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk cargo, bulk transport of petroleum, oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quant ...

s to the Kilpilahti

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, ...

Porvoo Porvoo (; ; ) is a city in Finland. It is located on the south coast of the country, on the Gulf of Finland. Porvoo lies in the eastern part of the Uusimaa region. The population of Porvoo is approximately , while the Porvoo sub-region, sub-re ...

during winter. However, in the interim report, published on 30 September 2003, the work group noted that unless other work outside the winter months could be arranged and the new multipurpose icebreaker would have to spend the rest of the year in pollution control readiness, the operating expenses would be very high.Monitoimimurtajan hankintaa valmistellut työryhmä antoi väliraportin
. Finnish Environment Institute, 2 October 2003. The work group published its final report on 31 December 2003 and came to a conclusion that while the proposed vessel would definitely be needed and it would be technically possible to construct one, fulfilling the requirements of the different operators with a single ship would be difficult and, as noted before, remaining on standby during the open water season would be very expensive. The work group estimated that the purchase price of the vessel would be 30–70 million euro. One of the proposed alternatives was the conversion of the Finnish multipurpose icebreaker ''Fennica'', built in 1993, to a spill response vessel, but this was not pursued further.Monitoimimurtajan hankinnassa erilaisia mahdollisuuksia
. Finnish Environmental Institute, 22 January 2004. The decision of ordering the new multipurpose icebreaker was made in late 2004 and the

and the Finnish Maritime Administration were authorized by the Government to make an agreement on the vessel and launch a

request for tender An invitation to tender (ITT, also known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business activ ...

s in early 2005. The new oil spill response vessel was expected to enter service in 2007.More efficient oil spill response with multi-function icebreakers
. Finnish Environment Institute, 4 June 2005. However, only a few offers were received and the new vessel, for which 134 million euro was reserved in the budget, turned out to be more expensive than expected. After evaluating more economic alternatives in October 2005 the committee working on the project came to a conclusion that a new multipurpose oil recovery vessel would still be the best solution to improve spill response readiness.Talouspoliittinen ministerivaliokunta haluaa uudenlaisen monitoimialuksen torjumaan öljyvahinkoja
. Ympäristöministeriö, 13 December 2005. 35 million euro were allocated for the purchasing of the new vessel. The Finnish Environment Institute sent offers to several shipyards, both domestic and foreign, during the spring 2007. Construction of the new vessel was awarded to the Finnish shipyard UKI Workboat Ltd (Uudenkaupungin Työvene Oy) and the contract, worth 48 million euro, was signed on 26 October 2007. As the new vessel was more expensive than initially planned, an additional 13 million euro was allocated for the purchase in the supplementary budget. The vessel, expected to enter service in 2010–2011, would be operated by the Finnish Navy and based in Upinniemi, where it would replace the aging spill response vessel ''Hylje''. The ship underwent sea trials in early 2011 and was commissioned in May.SYKE lähetti tarjouspyynnön monitoimialuksesta
. Suomen Ympäristökeskus, 23 March 2007.

Naming

On 8 March 2011, the new multipurpose spill response vessel became the third ship of the Finnish Navy to be named after

Louhi Louhi (; alternate names include Loviatar (), Loveatar, Lovetar, Lovehetar, Louhetar and Louhiatar) is the ruler of Pohjola in Finnish mythology.Frog; Siikala; Stepanova (2012:179). She is regarded as a goddess of death and disease. She is also t ...

, the queen of

Pohjola Pohjola (; from 'base, bottom', but used in derived forms like ''pohjois-'' to mean 'north' + ''-'' 'place'), sometimes just Pohja (), is a location in Finnish mythology. It is one of the two main polarities in the Finnish national epic, the ''K ...

in the

Finnish mythology Finnish mythology commonly refers of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a Finnish Neopaganism, modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many shared features with Estonian mythology, Estonian and othe ...

. Its

pennant number In the Royal Navy and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, ships are identified by pennant number (an internationalisation of ''pendant number'', which it was called before 1948). Historically, naval ships flew a flag that iden ...

is 999. The first ''Louhi'' was a minelayer, built in 1917 as ''Voin'', that was left behind by withdrawing

Russian Navy The Russian Navy is the Navy, naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces. It has existed in various forms since 1696. Its present iteration was formed in January 1992 when it succeeded the Navy of the Commonwealth of Independent States (which had i ...

. The newly founded Finnish Navy acquired the ship and renamed it first ''M-1'' (''Miinalaiva 1'', Finnish for ''Minelayer 1'') in 1918 and finally ''Louhi'' in 1936. On 12 January 1945, when the ship was laying mines with minelayer ''Ruotsinsalmi'' at the

, it was hit either by a mine or a torpedo from a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

. The first ''Louhi'' sank in two minutes with a loss of 11 lives. The second ''Louhi'' was built in 1939 as icebreaker ''Sisu'' and handed over to the Navy in 1970, renamed and given pennant number 90. The ship served as a support ship for ''Tuima'' class missile boats and ''Turunmaa'' class gunboats, towing them during transit journeys. The second ''Louhi'' was decommissioned and scrapped in 1986 mainly because it had become nearly impossible to get spare parts for the old engines.

Operational career

On 24 December 2011 ''Louhi'' and ''Linja'', another Finnish spill response vessel, were dispatched to the

Gulf of Bothnia The Gulf of Bothnia (; ; ) is divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea, and it is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland's west coast ( East Bothnia) and the northern part of Sweden's east coast ( West Bothnia an ...

as a precaution after a

tall oil Tall oil, also called liquid rosin or tallol, is a viscous yellow-black odorous liquid obtained as a by-product of the kraft process of wood pulp manufacture when pulping mainly coniferous trees. The name originated as an anglicization of the Swe ...

spill from Arizona Chemical plant near

Söderhamn Söderhamn is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Söderhamn Municipality, Gävleborg County, Sweden with 11,761 inhabitants in 2010. Sports The biggest local sport is bandy. Broberg/Söderhamn Bandy play in the highest division E ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. While Sweden had not send an official request for assistance yet, the Finnish recovery ships prepared to join the spill combating operation if the oil slick, at that time some northeast from Söderhamn, started drifting towards the Finnish coast.Suomi valmistautuu öljyntorjuntaan Pohjanlahdella
. Suomen Ympäristökeskus, 24 December 2011. Retrieved 24 December 2011 Although ''Louhi'' can operate in relatively high seas, the recovery effort was hindered and subsequently the oil slick was broken up by the storm on 27 December 2011.Öljylautta lähestyy Suomen rannikkoa, myrsky pysäytti torjunta-alukse
Helsingin Sanomat, 25 December 2011. Retrieved 25 December 2011 When ''Louhi'' moved to the recovery area on 28 December, the slick could not be located and only of weathered oil was recovered.
YLE, 28 December 2011. Retrieved 13 January 2012

Mission

Due to the sensitive ecology of the Baltic Sea, it has been agreed in the Helsinki Convention (HELCOM) that instead of using

dispersants A dispersant or a dispersing agent is a substance, typically a surfactant, that is added to a suspension of solid or liquid particles in a liquid (such as a colloid or emulsion) to improve the separation of the particles and to prevent their sett ...

to dissolve the oil slicks, combatting the spills is based on mechanical recovery using oil booms to limit the spill and skimmers to collect the oil from the surface as quickly and completely as possible. For this purpose every Finnish pollution control vessel is equipped with permanently installed built-in recovery equipment and such systems have also been installed on several patrol vessels of the

Finnish Border Guard The Finnish Border Guard (FBG, ; ) is the agency responsible for enforcing the security of Finland's borders. Duties Main duties of the Finnish Border Guard: * Protecting the land borders and territorial waters of Finland from unauthorised e ...

.Oil pollution response methods
. Finnish Environment Institute, 21 July 2010. As the primary mission of the new vessel is pollution prevention, the ship has an extensive array of equipment capable of detecting and recovering spilled oil and chemicals in open water, high seas and ice conditions. Some of the equipment, such as an oil-detecting radar and a

thermographic camera Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal video or thermal imaging, is a process where a Thermographic camera, thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are exa ...

in the mast, are used for the first time in a Finnish oil recovery vessel. In addition the ship has a weather station and a

wet laboratory A wet lab, or experimental lab, is a type of laboratory where it is necessary to handle various types of chemicals and potential "wet" hazards, so the room has to be carefully designed, constructed, and controlled to avoid spillage and contaminatio ...

capable of analyzing water samples automatically. In addition to environmental duties, ''Louhi'' can also be used as a support ship for underwater operations by the Finnish Navy. The vessel has facilities for divers, a

moon pool A moon pool is an equipment deployment and retrieval feature used by oil platforms, marine drilling platforms, drillships, diving support vessels, fishing vessels, oceanography, marine research and underwater exploration or research vessels, and ...

and

remotely operated underwater vehicle A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROUV) or remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is a free-swimming submersible craft used to perform underwater observation, inspection and physical tasks such as valve operations, hydraulic functions and other g ...

s (ROVs), and it can be used to lay and recover

submarine communications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s and car ...

which is stored in the ship's recovery tanks. During crisis time the ship, capable of carrying 1,000 tons of fuel and 100 tons of cargo, can be armed with one 40 mm main gun, two 12.7 mm machine guns and

naval mine A naval mine is a self-contained explosive weapon placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Similar to anti-personnel mine, anti-personnel and other land mines, and unlike purpose launched naval depth charges, they are ...

s,Louhi
. Merivoimat. Retrieved 4 June 2012 and used to supply island forts and other naval vessels.

Design

General characteristics

''Louhi'' is long, wide and has a draught of . At 3,450 tons, it is the largest ship by displacement currently in service in the Finnish Navy and the third largest ever, second only to the coastal defence ships ''Väinämöinen'' and ''Ilmarinen''. The ship is built according to

Germanischer Lloyd The was a classification society based in Hamburg, Germany. It ceased to exist as an independent entity in September 2013 as a result of its merger with Norway's DNV (Det Norske Veritas) to become DNV GL. Before the merger, as a technical sup ...

rules for classification with class notation of ''GL 100 A5, E4, NAV-OC, Tug, Supply Vessel, Marine Pollution Response Vessel, Oil Recovery Vessel, Chemical Recovery Vessel'' for the ship and ''GL MC, E4, AUT, FF1'' for the machinery. The vessel is built to the highest

Finnish-Swedish ice class Finnish-Swedish ice class is an ice class assigned to a vessel operating in first-year ice in the Baltic Sea and calling at Finland, Finnish or Sweden, Swedish ports. Ships are divided into six ice classes based on requirements for hull structura ...

, 1A Super, with special consideration for the dimensioning of the propulsion and hull to meet the requirements for icebreaking capability as the Finnish-Swedish ice class rules do not extend to icebreaking vessels.

Power and propulsion

Electricity is produced by four 9-cylinder

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

9L20 4-stroke medium-speed diesel generating sets with a combined output of . The generators provide power for all shipboard consumers, including two 2,700 kW

Z-drive A Z-drive is a type of marine propulsion unit. Specifically, it is an azimuth thruster. The pod can rotate 360 degrees allowing for rapid changes in thrust direction and thus vessel direction. This eliminates the need for a conventional rudder. ...

thrusters with 3.1-metre () four-bladed propellers and a 500 kW

bow thruster Manoeuvering thrusters (bow thrusters and stern thrusters) are transversal propulsion devices built into or mounted to either the Bow (watercraft), bow or stern (front or back, respectively) of a ship or boat to make it more manoeuvrable. Bow th ...

. The diesel-electric

azimuth thruster An azimuth thruster is a configuration of marine propellers placed in pods that can be rotated to any horizontal angle (azimuth), making a rudder redundant. These give ships better maneuverability than a fixed propeller and rudder system. Type ...

s, manufactured by

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

, give the vessel excellent maneuverability at low speeds, stationkeeping and

dynamic positioning Dynamic positioning (DP) is a computer-controlled system to automatically maintain a vessel's position and heading by using its own propellers and thrusters. Position reference sensors, combined with wind sensors, motion sensors and gyrocompas ...

capability, and a towing capacity of . ''Louhi'' has icebreaking capabilities second only to real icebreakers. The ship is designed to maintain a continuous speed of in ice and in ice, both with a snow cover. Additionally the vessel is designed to be capable of penetrating an ice ridge with a maximum thickness of with a single ram starting from , maintain a speed of in thick brash ice channel and be capable of operating in brash ice channels up to thick.Hänninen, S. & Sassi, J
Acute Oil Spills in Arctic Waters - Oil Combating in Ice
Research report VTT-R-03638-09. VTT, 2010. In open water the ship has a service speed of . The operational range of the vessel is and the provisions give the ship an endurance of 20 days.

Recovery equipment

The mechanical oil recovery equipment on board ''Louhi'' is based on the same stiff brush technology that has been proved to be effective by the previous Finnish spill response vessels. The vessel is equipped with three different types of recovery systems developed and manufactured by Lamor, each suitable for specific weather conditions. The equipment is fully mechanized, remotely controlled and capable of deploying to operational mode in 10 minutes per side. The fourth system, designed for difficult ice conditions, is an innovation developed by the Finnish Environment Institute. In open water, the ship uses a permanently installed advancing system which consists of outriggers and sweeping booms on both sides of the ship that recover oil and debris from a wide area as the vessel moves forwards with a constant speed of . The polluted material is collected in side boxes inside the ship where they are separated from the water for processing by brush conveyors.Side Collector LSC-3 C/2300
. Lamor Corporation. Retrieved 12 April 2011 The sweeping width of the advancing system is , second only to the Finnish icebreaker ''Kontio'' that has been equipped for oil recovery by the

European Maritime Safety Agency The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) is a European Union agency charged with reducing the risk of maritime accidents, marine pollution from ships and the loss of human lives at sea by helping to enforce the pertinent EU legislation. It is ...

and has a sweeping width of approximately .Valtion öljyntorjunta-alukset
. Finnish Environment Institute, 7 April 2011.J/m Kontio valmiustilassa öljyntorjuntaan 24/7
. Suomen Merimies-Unioni SMU ry, 15 September 2010. However, as the advancing system can only be used effectively in calm seas with

significant wave height In physical oceanography, the significant wave height (SWH, HTSGW or ''H''s) is defined traditionally as the mean ''wave height'' (trough (physics), trough to crest (physics), crest) of the highest third of the ocean surface wave, waves (''H''1/ ...

below one metre, ''Louhi'' is also equipped with a special "wave damping tank", an innovation used for the first time in a Finnish recovery vessel, that can be used in combination with the aforementioned stiff brush conveyors and a shorter sweeping boom to collect oil in swell. The system consists of a dampening channel that guides the oil to the recovery system on the other side of the ship. Spilled oil surrounded by

oil booms An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

can also be collected by two free-floating skimmers connected to the vessel by a flexible pipe. As the recovery systems designed for open water can not be used efficiently or at all during wintertime, ''Louhi'' is also equipped with two recovery systems capable of collecting spilled oil from the sea in difficult ice conditions and clean ice blocks covered in oil. The main recovery system consists of three large brushes controlled by individual crane arms installed on the stern deck. The system, developed specifically for this vessel, has a sweeping width of and recovers oil from the sea as the vessel moves astern in ice. In addition the vessel has two Lamor LRB-series oil recovery buckets that have large rotating brushes that resemble those of

street sweeper A street sweeper or street cleaner is a person or machine that cleans streets. People have worked in cities as "sanitation workers" since sanitation and Waste management, waste removal became a priority. A street-sweeping person would use a b ...

s and are used in a similar fashion. Despite their limited recovery capacity, the brush buckets operated by the ship's cranes have been proven to be effective in ice conditions in the past, such as that of ''Runner 4'' in 2006.Finland’s Newest Oil Spill Response Vessel
. Lamor Corporation Ab, 2011. Retrieved 9 May 2011Lampela, K
Baltic approach in oil spill recovery in ice, case studies and recent developments in Baltic Sea States
. Finnish Environment Institute, 2007. The recovery tanks, equipped with heating and an inert gas system that uses

nitrogen Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

to displace explosive gases, have a total capacity of 1,200 cubic metres for spilled oil and 200 cubic metres for chemicals. In addition to recovery equipment the vessel carries of heavy duty oil boom. When the light components in

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...

evaporate over time, they form an explosive compound with air. For this reason special attention has been paid to prevent sparks and high surface temperatures in the ship and its equipment. In case of chemical spills, the ship can be overpressurized to prevent potentially toxic chemical substances from entering the ship and harming its crew. In such situation, the outer decks can be accessed via air locks.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Louhi Icebreakers of Finland Ships of the Finnish Navy Ships built in Finland 2009 ships