TYPES OF DREDGE EQUIPMENT

Welcome back from the holidays! I hope we are well rested. 

So today I will be talking about various types of dredge equipment and their categories. 

They can majorly be categorised into two main types namely:

• The trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) and
• The cutter suction dredger (CSD)

Trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD)

Jan De Nul has the world’s two largest hopper dredgers. A trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) uses a suction pipe, whereby it loads the sediments into one or more hoppers. When fully loaded, the hopper sails to an area where it can dump the sediments through doors in the hull or it discharges or 'rainbows' the sediments to the designated area. The size of a hopper dredger is measured in metre cube.The two largest TSHD’s are owned by Belgium dredging company, Jan De Nul: Cristobal Colon and having a hopper capacity of 46,000 metre cube.

In the ‘90s the jumbo hopper dredger was introduced (15,000 30,000m3), Jan De Nul’s vessels entered service in 2009 and 2010. Despite this trend of bigger equipment, it is important that a dredging company has a versatile fleet. That is, small dredgers for maintenance and beach nourishment, trenching and locations that will not be easily assessable for large dredgers whereas large dredgers for land reclamation and stockpiling. 

 Cutter suction dredger (CSD)

DEME has the largest cutter suction dredger (CSD). A cutter suction dredger has a cutting mechanism at the suction inlet of its suction tube. A cutter is used in geological areas consisting of hard surface materials, such as at gravel deposits or surface bedrock. The more recent introduction of very powerful cutters gives the opportunity to excavate harder rock by cutters instead of using the blasting technique. 

The size of a cutter dredger is measured in installed power (kW). The largest cutter is owned by Belgium dredging company DEME: D’Artagnan , which has 28,200kW installed power and was built in 2005. 

In the second place, just behind the D’Artagnan , stands Jan De built in 2003 Nul’s JFJ, which has 27,240kW installed power. DEME has also signed an agreement with IHC to produce for then the world's largest self-propelled CSD named "SPARTACUS" with 44,180 kW and a dredging depth of 45m. 

Spartacus will be the world's first LNG- powered cutter suction dredger and will be delivered in the summer of 2019.
Besides hoppers and cutters there are also the not too popular dredgers like backhoe dredgers, split hopper barges, floating grab cranes, etc.
For questions on the types of Dredgers and the ones more suitable for your projects, ‎contact the dredge consultant