Power October 2022 + 140th Anniversary Supplement - S12

The Technology Evolution of Wärtsilä's Diesel
Engines
2. Wilmer Wahlstedt stands beside Wärtsilä's first engine-Wärtsilä Vasa 14-which the
company launched in 1959. Courtesy: Wärtsilä
Understanding the pivotal role diesel
engines would play in propelling
ships, Wärtsilä first set out to design
its own diesel engines in 1954, contracting
Wilmer Wahlstedt (Figure 2),
a young civil engineer, to lead the
design work at a Wärtsilä shipyard
in Vaasa (or Vasa), a city on the west
coast of Finland. The company's first
engine unveiled in June 1959, dubbed
the Wärtsilä Vasa 14, had only three
cylinders. The pilot engine was soon
followed by a six-cylinder engine.
The company's most pivotal innovation
in diesel engine design, however,
came in the 1970s, with the launch of
the Vasa 32. Later renamed the Wärtsilä
32, the engine grew into Wärtsilä's
highest-selling product globally, and it
has been used in vessels ranging from
fishing trawlers to cruise ships.
A version of the Vasa 32 capable
of combusting heavy fuel oil (HFO)
likewise " revolutionized the world of
fuels, " said Jussi Heikkinen, Director,
Growth and Development, Americas,
Wärtsilä Energy. " There were not such
small engines in the world, but there
was a lot of HFO in the world, and supment,
and construction (EPC) contractors
via a power plant services business
that remains lucrative today.
Wärtsilä says that the power plant
business in the following decades continued
to thrive, despite a volatile phase
in its corporate history. In 1989, Wärtsilä
Marine, the company's illustrious
and long-standing shipyard company,
went bankrupt. This pushed Wärtsilä
to pool its marine resources with shipbuilder
Valmet, resulting in an exchange
of assets: Wärtsilä acquired Valmet's
shipbuilding activities, and
Valmet
took over Wärtsilä's paper machines.
12
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
plies were very stable and cheap, " he
added. The Vasa 32 " suddenly opened
[the fuel] to very large ship engines
and power plants, " he said. The Vasa
32 remained integral for the company
through the 1990s, even through a debilitating
recession in Finland.
Leveraging early advances in automation,
the company launched the
Wärtsilä 46 engine in 1985, and its
first liquified natural gas engine in
1995. In the 2010s, Wärtsilä expanded
the portfolio with the low-speed Wärtsilä
X62 and the X72 engines. In 2013,
the company launched new engines
based on low-pressure technology,
as well as two auxiliary engines. And
a year later, it introduced the 46DF
engine, solidifying its leadership in
dual-fuel technology. However, Wärtsilä
says the most significant technological
progress came in 2015, with
the launch of the Wärtsilä 31, an automotive-derived
engine that can run
on various HFOs, as well as gas and
diesel. The Guinness Book of World
Records recognized the engine as the
world's most efficient four-stroke diesel
engine at that time.
In 1989, Wärtsilä also signed a merger
agreement with the Scandinavian manufacturing
powerhouse Lohja. After an
extraordinary meeting, Lohja shareholders
approved a new name for the company:
Metra Oy Ab. In 2000, however,
Metra shareholders readopted " Wärtsilä "
as the company's formal name.
The 1990s brought significant change
for the energy business, too. The company
went from " selling
technology
to profiling itself to a comprehensive
solutions partner. Rather than simply
building and selling facilities, Wärtsilä
adopted an approach based on the cuswww.powermag.com
tomer's
long-term needs and goals as
well as social and economic analyses
based on them, " the company says.
The attribute helped Wärtsilä " stand
out from the competition " so distinctly
through the 1990s that it propelled the
company into an accelerated period of
" internationalism. " The active development
of businesses in new countries
and markets was driven by strategic
thinking to fill in gaps for needed technology.
Wärtsilä power plants were deployed
in the Caribbean, countries in
Africa, Indonesia, and other developing
economies, helping to spur new infrastructure
and growth.
Meanwhile, as businesses became
more maintenance-driven, Wärtsilä acquired
engine suppliers and took over
their global maintenance operations.
By the early 2000s, the company had
transformed into a " genuinely global
company. " It had " the ability to find
new market areas, both geographically,
and in terms of products, as well
as react quick to market changes and
create new products and applications, "
Wärtsilä says. That included several acquisitions,
including of Finnish company
Sermet Oy, a biopower company that
specialized in small and medium-sized
boiler plants running on biofuels, oil,
and gas, in 2001. In 2008, it formed a
joint venture with Metso combining
Metso's Heat & Power business and
Wärtsilä's Biopower business.
In the latter 2000s and early 2010s,
Wärtsilä began to snap up a significant
market share in the gas power business,
leveraging a shift driven by cheaper,
more prolific natural gas supplies.
However, the market was shifting.
Heikkinen recalls visiting a Colorado
dispatch center, where a dispatcher
demonstrated the value of balancing
intermittent wind power. " I think that
was a major culmination point, when
the old market that we were totally
dominating, [was poised] to gradually
fade away, " Heikkinen said.
" There was a huge gas turbine market,
but we knew they are still not a
very good choice if you have to start
and stop all the time because the sun
is not shining and the wind is not blowing, "
he said. To stay ahead, Wärtsilä
immediately set out to find solutions to
issues that could crop up as the world
POWER Supplement | October 2022
http://www.powermag.com
Power October 2022 + 140th Anniversary Supplement

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