The past weekend we payed a visit to Salone Nautico di Venezia, Venice Boat Show. Located in Venice's Arsenale, it offers a beautiful experience which makes you review the boating industry from another perspective. It embodies an unique combination of style, architecture and sustainability. These three concepts make this boat show stand out amongst all others. Discover in the text below our experience on the boat show.
The boat show offers an inside area focused on design, naval architecture and accompanying equipment.Within three halls you could have reviewed electric engines, internal combustion engines, different textile offers for boats, battery pack providers and similar.
The outside area offered three main piers and on-dock booths. One pier was dedicated for sailing boats and catamarans, featuring multiple international brands. The second pier presented smaller motor boats and yacht tenders, but also an array of boats running on alternative propulsion, from fully electric boats to boats running on solar power only. The already known names in electric boats such as Candela and X Shore were present, alongside special projects such as the fully electric Riva, on the photo below. Moreover, electric toys such as the Overboat by Neocean were cruising in the bay of the boat show.
Referring to alternatives to internal combustion processes, some brands put a focus on different alternatives for conservative propulsion, such as HVO. The abbreviation HVO stands for “Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil”.
Hydrotreated vegetable oils have lower NOx emission & deposit formation. The common issues present with ester-type biodiesel fuels, such as storage stability problems, more rapid aging of engine oil or poor cold properties are less present with HVOs. Moreover,
fuel logistics, engines, exhaust aftertreatment devices and exhaust emissions are not compromised (Aatola et. al., 2008). The test settings in the study by Aatola and colleagues (2008) showed 6% lower NOx and to 35% lower smoke compared with sulfur-free EN 590 diesel fuel.
Lastly, the MUVE yacht projects hall featured dozens of projects focusing on super yacht charter and luxury passenger ships. Some of our favorites are Bayani, the 499 GT super yacht intended for yacht charter in the Philipines and running on methanol. The naval architects point out that methanol as fuel offers reduced SOx, NOx and PM emissions. The engine is projected to be from MTU and to be produced until 2026.
The second one is Nixie, a project produced from 50% recycled aluminium from used products, while its classification will be tested and proved according to the UNI EN 10315:2006 standard.