China has boosted its strategic capacity from land reclamation to deep-sea mining and pipelines, with the successful completion of sea trials for Asia’s largest trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD).
The Tongjun – China’s first domestically designed super dredger – completed its five days of testing in the Yellow Sea off the northeastern Chinese coast on Tuesday, three months after its launch, according to state news agency Xinhua.
With a hopper capacity of more than 38,000 cubic metres (1.3 million cubic feet) and twin 9,000 kilowatt mud pumps, the Tongjun and its sister ship Junguang were launched in August, from shipyards in the northern city of Tianjin and Guangzhou in the country’s south, respectively.
Developer China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) has not announced a testing plan for Junguang, which has the same capacity and similar design as the Tongjun at 198 metres (650 feet) long, with a beam of 38.5 metres and a depth of 18 metres.
Both dredgers were designed to extract materials from a maximum depth of 120 metres, with their improved suction making it possible to fill the large hoppers within 90 minutes, Xinhua reported.
