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Power & Propulsion Alternatives for Ships 2017

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25.05.2016

Power & Propulsion Alternatives for Ships 2017

Power & Propulsion Alternatives for Ships 2017

Power & Propulsion Alternatives for Ships 2017 conference is being hosted by RINA at Europort Rotterdam on 8th November 2017.

The current use of alternative fuels and renewable energy sources within the shipping industry is still relatively low. Growing environmental legislation are driving the need to develop and apply innovative alternative power and propulsion technology for ships.

The industry must embrace the challenge of designing cleaner lower carbon emission ships. This conference seeks to investigate some of these alternatives, including:

  • Wind powered or wind assisted propulsion
  • Alternative fuel systems - LNG, methanol, hydrogen, etc
  • Renewable fuels - biofuels, ethanol, Dimethyl Ether (DME) algae-based fuel, etc
  • Pure electric and hybrid electric propulsion
  • Batteries and fuel cells
  • Solar power

Wind Powered or Wind Assisted

Merchant sailing ship technology reached its technical peak in 1840’s but even as recently as 1960s there were still large sailing cargo vessels operating efficiently around the European coast waters. There was renewed interest in wind powered ships in the 1980’s, due to the 1970’s oil crisis. Recently there has been a reintroduction of a few small scale commercial freight operations using sail power, although these are generally based on 19th century technology and run by keen enthusiasts.

Wind power alone is unlikely to be able to offer the “power density” necessary to replace a 50MW large 2 stroke marine diesel engine. There may also be issues with reliability and predictability of wind power on some of the more arduous trade routes. So wind power may not provide a universal solution for the shipping industry but it does seem to offer the greatest potential for double digit fuel saving. There have been numerous concept designs and even a few notable full scale prototype trials for wind powered and wind assisted motor vessels.  There are plenty of existing technologies including; Flettner rotors, WingSail, DynaRigs, kites, etc. The challenge may not necessarily be developing new technologies but evolving and adapting these existing technologies to overcome the shipping industries commercial, technical and regulatory challenges.

Alternative & renewable fuels

LNG is currently the most heavily promoted alternative fuel source but is still only used on a relatively small numbers of niche or specialised vessels. In March 2015, Stena Line launched the world’s first methanol powered ferry. The Kawasaki Heavy industry is designing liquid hydrogen carriers that will also use the hydrogen as fuel.
Sustainable or renewable biofuels are also currently used on a very small number of vessels. They are biodegradable, non-toxic, and essentially free of sulphur and aromatics. However, there can be issues with long term storage related to unstable fuel quality and micro biological growth, water content leading to acidity, flow degradation a low temperature and currently they have a higher production cost than fossil fuels. There is also the possibility of using blended diesel oil and biofuels.
Many of the engine manufactures are providing dual fuel technology, which can use both conventional and alternative fuels. All these fuels all have issues with bunker availability and lack of established wide spread distribution networks.

All electric and hybrid electric

Electric boats mainly for use on canal, river and lake were very popular from the 1880s and even today there are a number of commercially available electric powered leisure craft.  Ampere the world's first electrical car and passenger ferry powered by batteries has recently entered service in Norway. Build by Fjellstrand the ferry is 80 meters long and 20 meters wide and equipped by Siemens. With three battery packs, one on board and one at each pier, it functions emission free. These systems rely on either mains charged batteries, solar panels or wind turbines.

Diesel-electric propulsion is used on a number of different types of vessels that have large variable design loads such as warships, offshore, tugs, dredgers, icebreakers, etc. They can offer advantages of higher efficiency, reduced noise & vibration, greater redundancy and flexibility of layout but will have higher initial costs. Hybrid diesel-electric systems can offer efficiency improvement by running the engines on optimal load and absorbing many of the load fluctuations through batteries. The system is designed and integrated to optimise the overall operation of the vessel using battery power to help cover the vessels peak load or during specific parts of the vessels voyage. There is considerable ongoing research and development work being undertaken on battery technology.

Solar

There have been significant advances in terms of development of more effective lightweight solar panels suitable of the marine environment Combined solar power plus batteries have been used successfully for a number of small commercial vessels. However, solar panels alone are unable to provide the levels of energy need for the propulsion of a large ship. It can be used as an important alternative source for onboard electrical systems thereby helping to reduce the vessels overall fuel consumption

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