LED instead of conventional illumination, hybrid propulsion systems, exhaust scrubbers, new water pumps and courses on driving frugally: Scandlines relies on sustainability down the line. This also includes air conditioning the ferry car deck efficiently. Alongside the drive, this system consumes a large amount of energy. Since trucks transporting flammable substances also cross the Fehmarn Belt, the fans must be explosion protected. Ventilation with potential The ferries have two bridges to avoid having to turn around outside the ports. Before the retrofit, a total of eight large AC fans supplied fresh air for the closed car deck’s 12,000 m3. However, some of the fans always ran backward for incoming and waste air. This is a particularly inefficient way of working, as fans are always designed for a specific airflow direction and reverse operation drastically increases power consumption. Fresh air in the car deck Together with ebm-papst in Denmark, the ship operator developed a completely new concept. Clusters of four explosion-protected EC axial fans are mounted to a pivoting metal plate in a FanGrid. The plate with the fans can easily be rotated to the airflow direction required. With this system, the fans always move the air in the direction for which they are ideally designed and operate with maximum efficiency. The fact that four fans are taking on the work of one also has an advantage: the surface the air is moved across is enlarged. This optimizes the air exchange on the car deck even more. And there is no need to make any structural modifications to the ship. Tremendous savings The measures enable savings of 2 million kilowatt hours annually: an amount equal to the annual consumption of over 65 single-family homes. Now the ship operator has also replaced the fans for cabin air conditioning with EC fans. An upgrade for three more ferries that go between Puttgarden and Rødby has been planned. Full power ahead You would like to know more about this topic? Please got to our article published in the ebm-papst customer magazine mag, here Scandlines chief engineer Carsten Johansen also tells his story.