NANTONG, China (Reuters) — China launched Asia’s largest cutter suction dredger on Friday at the port of Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, marking a big stride forward in the country’s building of dredgers.
The dredger, “Tiankun”, is 140 meters long and 27.8 meters wide. It can smash underwater rocks, suck out sand, water and squirt to as far as 15 km at a speed of 6,000 cubic meters per hour, equivalent to three standard swimming pools. It is the No.1 in Asia in terms of efficiency and capacity.
Built by the China Communications Construction Company, Ltd. (CCCC), the dredger is equipped with four different rimers to handle hard rocks.
“The dredger is in the front ranks of the world in terms of capacity, strong in excavation and discharging and adaptation to sea conditions and good in mobility, movable to any place in the world,” said Wang Jian, head of the Tiankun building team from the CCCC Tianjin Dredging Co., Ltd.
“The pipelines of Tiankun have gone through optimization on many occasions to reduce in-pipe resistance and realize the maximum discharge distance from six kilometers to 15,” said Kong Fanzhen, architect of Tiankun’s hull from the CCCC Tianjin Dredging Co., Ltd.
It took six years to complete the building of Tiankun. It is the first self-propelled heavy cutter suction dredger designed and built entirely on China’s own.
Kong expects that the success in the building of Tiankun will lead to research and development of other new equipment and new technologies.
According to plan, Tiankun will first go through a period of system and equipment trial-run before being put into use by June 2018.
