#engine decarbonizing near me

[nypaenergy]

National Engineers Week 2023: Haoyu (Robert) Wang

NYPA is celebrating Engineers Week to recognize the achievements and contributions of our talented engineers in developing and maintaining reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy solutions for New York State.

Name: Haoyu (Robert) Wang Title: Mechanical Engineer II Location: WPO

What is a typical day/week like for you?

A typical day for me is collaborating with on-site and home office personnel, providing engineering solutions to NYPA’s generation facilities, and performing calculations and engineering analyses on multiple projects.

What drew you to NYPA as an engineer?

NYPA initiated great projects such as decarbonization and revitalization of the hydro generation plants. The contribution I can make to the organization will bring values to the state and the nation. Can you describe your professional journey and how it led you to NYPA?

My professional journey started with an engineering/consulting firm, where I gained lots of analytical knowledge on providing engineering solutions. NYPA provided opportunities for engineers like me to integrate into existing and future projects. Also, upon joining NYPA, I am broadening my technical and management background as an engineer. This means a lot for career advancement.

Can you tell us about one of your best accomplishments in engineering? What about this project makes you most proud? 

In the past, I performed engineering calculations and piping and equipment stress analyses, as well as site walkdowns, mostly for new power plant design and construction. At NYPA, my biggest project is still ongoing, which is the High Energy Piping program at the Zeltmann Project. It has been a successful journey during the past two years with this project. We identified multiple piping failures and saved the plant from many unexpected and forced outages and made it a safer place to work.

Do you have any advice for engineering students or engineers just entering the workforce? 

Yes -- when a new engineer enters the workforce, one may be asked to perform certain tasks using an existing software/program. This would make the engineer’s life easier as everything has been set up but make sure to spend more time to learn and ask the engineering theories on the backend. So, the engineer will understand how the process works and it will be helpful in a long run.

What drew you into the discipline of engineering? 

I like mechanical engineering as it is related to cars, engines, robots and other cool stuff I liked when I was a child. I always wanted to learn how it works so I chose to study the mechanical discipline.

What kind of engineering skills would you like to develop in the near future? 

I would like to gain more engineering skills in plant and transmission operations. My past was more about design, but to be able to gain more knowledge in operations will help me assist NYPA’s projects better.

What personal characteristics do you think are needed to become a successful engineer? 

Be open minded, communicative and be willing to help others. Engineering is not a one-man show. It requires a collaborative mind and it is a teamwork process.

What types of challenges in engineering do you enjoy? 

To proactively analyze and figure out an issue before it happens.

Why did you choose to become a Professional Engineer? 

A PE’s requirement includes comprehensive understanding of various aspects of the engineering world. Also, most importantly, it makes sure that the engineer holds a high standard of engineering ethics, which should be very crucial in this field. A PE is also highly regarded as an individual, and driving for excellence is also a virtue that I hold myself up to.

[lamarcross]

Search For Solar Sales Near Me And Connect With The Best Solar Installer In Colorado

How do solar panels work? Have you ever wondered how something as simple as sunlight can power your calculator, light up your home, or even charge your phone? The answer lies in the fascinating world of solar panels. Let us explain how solar panels work in straightforward terms and how to find solar sales near me company.

As of today, solar panels are a rapidly growing renewable energy source, significantly impacting how millions of homes across the USA are powered. Homeowners’ increasing adoption of solar technology is driven primarily by the desire to reduce electricity bills, environmental concerns, technological advancements, and supportive government policies.

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Contact experts at The Solar Revolution today for a solar estimate. Find out exactly how much solar panels will cost and how much you could save on your electricity bill. Take the first step towards a greener, more cost-effective future. Reach out now and harness the power of the sun!

Do you know why we are the experts?

Great operational footprint – we have a growing on-the-ground footprint that will allow us to grow with your company’s operations, making us an ideal sustainability partner.

A suite of distributed energy solutions – The Solar Revolution offers a range of solar sales solutions that enable our customers to achieve decarbonization footprints.

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Every consumer has distinct energy needs, and it’s crucial to understand your energy consumption patterns and goals. 

So make an informed decision after you search for solar sales near me and start to connect with prospective companies. Installing solar panels is a long-term investment, so make sure you pay for the best.

The Solar Revolution is always up to accomplish your solar energy needs. We will assist you in every step of the solar journey.

[jasonsavio]

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[joshuajacksonlyblog]

Op-Ed: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Crypto Mining Energy Consumption

We’ve all heard the surprising statistics about the world’s cryptocurrency mining demands on our energy: It’s on par with the amount of electricity Ireland uses in a year.

I pay special attention to this as the founder of one of the largest crypto mining companies in the world. We’re now 10 years into the crypto era, and the power demands of any developing economy only increase as it matures. The crypto mining industry’s power demands today go to providing proof of work, immutability and consensus in a decentralized network — it’s the essential three-ingredient cocktail that makes blockchain technology work.

This industry doesn’t use electricity to post status updates and share memes, but instead to revolutionize the world of money and value exchange. Blockchain technology has good momentum behind it, but it’s still in a developmental stage. It’s comparable to the proliferation of the modern internet: No one knows exactly where it’s headed, so only the best ideas will define its future.

Crypto mining chips have certainly gotten more efficient each year, but not to the point that they sufficiently push back against any increased electricity use. I’m not worried about crypto’s energy consumption, and I don’t think you should be either. Here are three big reasons why.

1. The Mining Industry Is Highly Flexible in Where It Can Deploy

Crypto mining companies don’t need to deploy near civilization. They don’t need to be confined to any particular place at all. As long as they have electricity and an internet connection, they can conduct business as usual. That means the mining industry will identify places in the world with an excess of natural energy, like wind and solar, then capture it to power their mining efforts.

2. Energy Usage Isn’t Inherently Bad If It’s Renewable

There’s so much energy available in the world thanks to solar, hydropower, geothermal, wind and the like. Crypto mining operators seeking the next level of optimization for their businesses will set up shop in places that offer these resources in abundance, working their electric bill toward zero. At Genesis Mining, for example, we advocate working from colder climates that require far less energy to keep hardware running at an optimal temperature.

3. Research Suggests Mining Contributes to the Support of Renewable Energy

Not only do crypto companies subsidize the adoption of their products when they use renewable energy, but emergent technologies follow a curve to become more efficient as they develop. Crypto is no exception.

Dr. Katrina Kelly-Pitou is an electrical and computer engineering research associate at the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote an article contending that the environmentalism cries against Bitcoin and related technologies are a red herring that distracts people from understanding how they actually work. She furthermore connects the dots between alternative energy sources for new technologies and their cost savings for the companies that implement them.

“I am a researcher who studies clean energy technology, specifically the transition toward decarbonized energy systems,” she writes. “New technologies — such as data centers, computers and before them trains, planes and automobiles — are often energy-intensive. Over time, all of these have become more efficient, a natural progression of any technology: Saving energy equates to saving costs.”

In other words, the effort to label crypto mining as wasteful and resource-intensive will only motivate people to make it more environmentally friendly. If it’s got no place to go but up, then that’s where it’s going to go.

Renewable Energy Sources for Mining Operations Will Become the New Normal

It’s clear to me that mining operations that capture their own energy will have a distinct competitive advantage over those that don’t. They invest in some technology up front but enjoy free energy afterward. The business of crypto mining depends on harnessing every conceivable efficiency, so it’s pretty tough to beat a $0 electric bill. That’s why there will be a push to develop environmentally friendly blockchain technologies — eco-friendliness is a new category of efficiency for these companies to tap.

Blockchain development is good because it’s going to develop other technologies in parallel. Increased demand for green energy, for example, means there is new business incentive for people to develop a compelling product or solution for sale. NASA developed technologies to help mankind explore space, but created a bunch of new things to improve human life on Earth in the process — things like LASIK surgery, improved firefighting equipment and even the portable cordless vacuum cleaner. As blockchain proliferation leads us to develop new technologies with it, there’s no telling what kinds of side innovations will spin off into major revolutions.

There’s clear financial incentive for mining operations to reduce their electricity costs, so economics dictates that operators will find ways to pay close to zero for energy. The blockchain space might be the breakthrough motivator we need for the green industry to see its next wave of innovation.

This is a guest post by Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Group. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

The post Op-Ed: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Crypto Mining Energy Consumption appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

from Cryptocracken Tumblr http://bit.ly/2IrXnEK via IFTTT

[hudsonespie]

BP Aims to be Net Zero by 2050

BP’s new CEO Bernard Looney has announced the company's new ambition to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero. 

The structure of BP’s organization – and of much of the industry – has been broadly the same for more than a century, split into separate organizations – upstream, downstream, and other businesses. To deliver its new ambition and aims, BP will now undergo a fundamental reorganisation. BP will now fundamentally reorganize and form four business groups: Production & Operations; Customers & Products; Gas & Low Carbon Energy and Innovation & Engineering.

The ambition is supported by 10 aims: 

Five aims to get BP to net zero: 1. Net zero across BP’s operations on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner.  2. Net zero on carbon in BP’s oil and gas production on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner. 3. 50 percent cut in the carbon intensity of products BP sells by 2050 or sooner. 4. Install methane measurement at all BP’s major oil and gas processing sites by 2023 and reduce methane intensity of operations by 50 percent. 5. Increase the proportion of investment into non-oil and gas businesses over time.

Five aims to help the world get to net zero: 6. More active advocacy for policies that support net zero, including carbon pricing. 7. Further incentivize BP’s workforce to deliver aims and mobilize them to advocate for net zero. 8. Set new expectations for relationships with trade associations. 9. Aim to be recognized as a leader for transparency of reporting, including supporting the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. 10. Launch a new team to help countries, cities and large companies decarbonize.

Looney said: “The world’s carbon budget is finite and running out fast. We need a rapid transition to net zero. We all want energy that is reliable and affordable, but that is no longer enough. It must also be cleaner. To deliver that, trillions of dollars will need to be invested in replumbing and rewiring the world’s energy system. It will require nothing short of reimagining energy as we know it.

“This will certainly be a challenge, but also a tremendous opportunity. It is clear to me, and to our stakeholders, that for BP to play our part and serve our purpose, we have to change. And we want to change – this is the right thing for the world and for BP.”

BP’s new ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner covers the greenhouse gas emissions from its operations worldwide, currently around 55 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MteCO2e) a year, and the carbon in the oil and gas that it produces, equivalent currently to around 360 MteCO2e emissions a year – both on an absolute basis. Taken together, delivery of these aims would equate to a reduction in emissions to net zero from what is currently around 415 MteCO2e a year.  

“This is what we mean by making BP net zero,” said Looney. “It directly addresses all the carbon we get out of the ground as well as all the greenhouse gases we emit from our operations. These will be absolute reductions, which is what the world needs. If this were to happen to every barrel of oil and gas produced, the emissions problem for our sector would be solved. But of course, the world is not that simple. The whole energy system has to be transformed and everyone has a contribution to make – producers and sellers of energy, policy makers and everyone who uses energy.” 

A Major Turnaround

Luke Parker, vice president, corporate analysis, at Wood Mackenzie said: “BP joins Shell, Total, Equinor and Repsol in making a major commitment to reduce its net carbon footprint. This marks a major turnaround in BP’s position. Just 12 months ago former CEO Bob Dudley said the company could not be held accountable for how people use its products. Looney is taking the company in a very different direction.”

Parker added: “It’s an ambition, rather than a target, but the commitment appears to be unconditional. In terms of scale of commitment, this puts BP towards the top of the pack, along with Repsol and Equinor. This will see BP’s business completely transformed over the coming decades: renewables and carbon abatement will get very big, legacy oil and gas will eventually get smaller. But the transition to 2050 is a multi-decade transition - not something that will happen in the next year or so.” 

New Team

Production & Operations will be led by Gordon Birrell and will be BP’s new operational center, bringing its operations together, focused on driving safety, efficiency and value growth. 

Customers & Products will be headed by Emma Delaney and will focus on customers as the driving force for the energy products and services of the future, and on customer experience and expansion in rapidly changing markets. 

Gas & Low Carbon Energy will be led by Dev Sanyal and will unite energy teams currently dispersed around BP to create focused low carbon solutions. It will also pursue opportunities in decarbonisation including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies.

Innovation & Engineering will be headed by David Eyton and will bring added momentum to BP’s venturing and Launchpad investments and act as a catalyst for creating value from disruptive opportunities. It will also house BP’s engineering discipline and safety and operational risk team.

Strategy & Sustainability will be headed by Giulia Chierchia, who is joining BP from McKinsey, and will ensure that sustainability is embedded at the top of BP and provide a single group-wide approach to strategy and capital allocation.

Regions, Cities & Solutions will be led by William Lin and will build relationships with regions, cities and large corporations, aiming to develop integrated energy and carbon solutions that can bring emissions down at scale. 

Trading & Shipping will be led by Carol Howle and will build on BP’s existing deep expertise in its existing business to more effectively help BP capture new commercial opportunities and add value. 

Four teams will serve as enablers of business delivery:

Finance headed by Murray Auchincloss. Legal headed by Eric Nitcher.  People & Culture headed by Kerry Dryburgh. Communications & Advocacy headed by Geoff Morrell.

BP intends to host a capital markets day in September at which the leadership team will set out more information on BP’s strategy and near-term plans.

from Storage Containers https://maritime-executive.com/article/bp-aims-to-be-net-zero-by-2050 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[technato]

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener

How these emission-belching behemoths will transition to batteries and fuel cells

Photo: Martin Witte/Alamy

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Photo: Martin Witte/Alamy

The Big Leagues: The Emma Maersk, one of the world’s largest container ships, is powered by a diesel engine. The ship can transport 11,000 containers with a crew of 13.

At the pier outside Amsterdam’s central train station, commuters stride aboard the IJveer 61. The squat ferry crisscrosses the waterfront, taking passengers from the city’s historic center to the borough of Noord. Beneath their feet, two electric motors propel the ferry through the gray-green waters, powered by 26 lithium-ion polymer batteries and a pair of diesel generators.

Hybrid vessels like the IJveer 61 are increasingly common in the Netherlands, where officials are pushing to limit toxic air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime sector. Patrol vessels and work ships are turning more to batteries and using less petroleum-based fuel; so are crane-carrying boats that pluck fallen bicycles from Amsterdam’s famous canals.

Some of these vessels recharge during off-hours, pulling from the harbor’s electric grid connection. In other boats, diesel generators recharge batteries as they run. As the harbor’s electricity infrastructure expands, more vessels could ditch diesel entirely, says Walter van der Pennen from EST-Floattech, the Dutch energy-storage company that oversaw installation of the IJveer 61’s series hybrid system.

“The next step is to move away from hybrids,” he tells me one drizzly afternoon from a café overlooking the waterway. “For all of the vessels here, it’s perfectly suitable to go full electric.”

Meanwhile, at a nearby shipyard, another company is building what it dubs the “Tesla ship”—an all-electric river barge, like a Model 3 for the sea. Its makers at Dutch manufacturer Port-Liner expect to complete five small barges and two large barges this year to edge out the area’s diesel-burning, soot-spewing versions.

These Dutch vessels mark the beginnings of a much larger energy transformation sweeping the world’s maritime shipping industry. As emissions climb and environmental policies strengthen, shipping companies and engineers are accelerating their pursuit of so-called zero-emissions technologies—a category that includes massive battery packs and fuel cells that run on hydrogen or ammonia. Hundreds of large cargo ships are also switching to liquefied natural gas, which produces less toxic air pollution than the typical maritime “bunker fuel” and is widely considered a stepping-stone on the path to full decarbonization.

“It’s been a journey for the shipping industry, but there’s now a broad understanding and agreement that there is a need to do something” about climate change, says Katharine Palmer, global sustainability manager at the shipping services company Lloyd’s Register. “Now it’s a case of working out what that ‘something’ is.”

Unlike vehicles and power plants, cargo ships remain conveniently out of sight to most of us. Yet shipping is the linchpin of our modern economy, moving about 90 percent of all globally traded goods, including T-shirts, bananas, and smartphones along with medicine, fuel, and even livestock. Around 93,000 container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers, and other vessels now ply the world’s waterways, delivering some 10.3 billion metric tons of goods in 2016, according to United Nations trade statistics. That’s four times the cargo delivered in 1970.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Nearly all cargo ships use diesel combustion engines to turn the propellers, plus diesel generators that power onboard lighting systems and communications equipment. Many vessels still burn heavy bunker fuel, a viscous, carbon-intensive petroleum product that’s left from the crude oil refining process.

As a result, maritime shipping contributes a sizable share—about 2 to 3 percent—of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. body that regulates the industry. Left unchecked, however, that share could soar to 17 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050 as trade increases and other industries curtail their carbon footprints, the European Parliament [PDF] found in a 2015 report.

With pressure mounting to tackle climate change, the IMO has taken steps to limit emissions, including requiring newly constructed ships to meet energy efficiency guidelines. In April, regulators adopted a landmark agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by at least 50 percent by 2050 from 2008 levels. Yet to align with the Paris climate agreement’s goals of keeping global warming to “well below” 2 °C above preindustrial levels, the industry must go even further, slashing its emissions to zero by midcentury. That means all vessels, from small ferries to ocean-faring cargo ships, must adopt zero-emissions systems in the coming decades, according to a research consortium comprised of major shipping companies and academic institutes.

Many shipbuilders and owners still aren’t convinced that such an overhaul is possible. But Palmer and other researchers say the technologies already exist to achieve this clean-shipping transformation. The challenge now, she says, is “making those technologies economically feasible, as well as being able to scale them.”

To get a glimpse of shipping’s future, I visited Hydrogenics, one of the world’s largest hydrogen producers and fuel cell manufacturers, at its headquarters near Toronto.

Among shipping experts, hydrogen fuel cells are considered the front-runner for zero-emissions technologies on larger, long-distance ships. Briefly, fuel cells get their charge not by plugging into the wall, as batteries do, but from hydrogen. With onboard hydrogen storage, fuel cells can produce power for the duration of most trips. Today’s batteries, by contrast, can’t make it very far without stopping to charge—and that’s impossible if a ship is in the middle of the ocean.

Cargo ships are “just too power hungry, and the run times are too large,” Ryan Sookhoo, Hydrogenics’ director of business development, tells me. “When we look at the marine space, we see it as a natural adopter [of fuel cells]. There’s only certain technologies that will be able to deliver.”

Hydrogenics has installed its fuel cells in buses, trains, cars, a four-seater airplane, speedboats, and a research vessel in Turkey. In recent years, the company has partnered with the U.S. energy and transportation departments and Sandia National Laboratories to build and test a fuel cell system that could eventually propel a cargo ship.

Sookhoo leads me through the company’s cavernous research and development wing, out a back door, and into the rain. A bright-blue 20-foot shipping container sits in the parking lot, labeled “Clean Power” in white block letters.

  Photos: Top: Hydrogenics; Bottom: ABB

Fuel Box: Hydrogenics hopes its fuel cell, which lives inside of a shipping container [top], can provide propulsion for cargo ships. When hydrogen gas flows into the cell, an anode breaks molecules within the gas into ions and electrons. Ions pass directly to the cathode, but electrons are blocked by a membrane and must first travel through a circuit, producing electricity. When the electrons finally reach the cathode, they reunite with ions to form water [bottom].

We step inside. In a back corner, four 30-kilowatt fuel cell modules are stacked on sliding shelves, like computer servers on a rack. Elsewhere in the container are 15 cylindrical tanks full of compressed hydrogen gas.

As it’s set up now, the blue container works as a generator. But unlike its diesel counterparts, it doesn’t emit any sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, or carbon dioxide—only a little heat and water, which is vented out the container’s side like mist in a steam room.

Fuel cells have three key components: a negative post, or anode; a positive post, or cathode; and a polymer electrolyte membrane, an extremely thin material that resembles plastic kitchen wrap. Hydrogen gas arrives at the anode, where the molecules break down into positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. The membrane allows the positive ions to pass through it into an electrolyte and thence to the cathode; the electrons flow from the anode through an outside circuit, producing current. Finally, at the cathode, the electrons returning from the circuit reunite with the hydrogen ions coming from the anode and, together with oxygen from the air, they form water.

In the container, the electricity produced by the fuel cell flows to a separate rack of power inverters, which change the direct current power to alternating current. That electricity then goes into a transformer, shaped like a chest freezer, and then over to a dozen power outlets on the external wall. A suitcase-size battery, charged by the fuel cell, runs the fans that cool the container and vent any hydrogen that leaks from the tanks.

Before returning to Canada, where the unit was built, this fuel cell system was tested in the Port of Honolulu. The Hawaiian shipping company Young Brothers used it to power refrigerated containers on shore. Eventually, Sookhoo says, Hydrogenics and Sandia plan to assemble these components inside a ship’s engine room to run electric motors that drive the propellers.

About two dozen early projects have shown that fuel cells are technically capable of powering and propelling vessels. The most prominent among them is the Viking Lady, a supply vessel for offshore rigs that launched in Copenhagen in 2009. Its molten carbonate fuel cell, with a power output of 330 kW, uses liquefied natural gas in lieu of hydrogen.

Wärtsilä Corp., the Finnish manufacturer that installed the Viking Lady’s hybrid system, has said its chief challenge was establishing industry-approved technical standards and safety procedures for the first-of-its-kind installation. (Separately, ExxonMobil is testing whether molten carbonate fuel cells could generate electricity from power plant emissions.)

While maritime fuel cells haven’t yet been deployed on a large, commercial scale, a recent Sandia study [PDF] suggests that oceangoing ships could feasibly operate using existing hydrogen fuel cell technologies. For instance, researchers studied the Emma Maersk, a mega–container ship with an 81-⁠MW diesel propulsion engine that routinely travels some 5,000 nautical miles (about 9,000 kilometers) from Malaysia to Egypt. Based on the available volume and mass of the ship’s engine and fuel rooms, they found the vessel could support enough fuel cell modules and hydrogen tanks to complete one of these long-distance trips before needing to refuel—on paper, at least.

Joseph W. Pratt, who coauthored the study, says he had expected to find that fuel cell systems simply wouldn’t work on bigger ships or on longer voyages. He thought that as the ship scaled up, the amount of required fuel cells, tanks, and storage equipment would become too heavy, or too voluminous, to fit within the vessel.

“The biggest surprise was that there wasn’t a limit,” Pratt recalls from San Francisco, where he recently founded Golden Gate Zero Emission Marine to provide fuel cell power systems and fueling logistics.

His team also studied batteries, which proved the better option for high-power vessels making short trips, such as ferries or yachts. If ships can recharge at point A and again at point B, they don’t need to carry hydrogen storage tanks, which saves space and weight. And batteries are less expensive than fuel cells.

1/5

The hybrid IJveer 60 carries passengers and cars around Amsterdam along with its sister ferry, the IJveer 61. Photo: EST-Floattach

2/5

MS Ampere was the world’s first commercial ferry to run exclusively on batteries. Photo: NCE Maritime CleanTech

3/5

After delays, the battery-driven Tycho Brahe now runs a regular route between Sweden and Denmark. Photo: John Peter/Alamy

4/5

The Viking Lady is powered by a molten carbonate fuel cell and transports supplies to offshore rigs. Photo: Wärtsilä Corp.

5/5

Port-Liner’s all-electric “Tesla ship” should begin sailing this year. Photo: Port-Liner

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Sookhoo says future zero-emissions cargo ships will likely use both technologies. Batteries can provide the initial spike of electricity that fires up the electric motor and puts the ship in motion—much as a car battery functions—while fuel cells will serve as the “range extender” that takes over as the battery winds down.

Given the potential, why aren’t more cargo shipbuilders ditching diesel and switching to fuel cells?

The technology is still prohibitively expensive, because fuel cells aren’t yet mass-produced. On a dollar-per-kilowatt-hour basis, the electricity cost from a fuel cell is roughly double or triple that from a diesel generator, Sookhoo estimates.

Second, hydrogen refueling stations are scarce and unevenly distributed around the world, whereas bunker fuel remains cheap and ubiquitous. For fuel-cell-powered freighters to succeed, ports will need to pipe in and store more hydrogen, and hydrogen production must ramp up dramatically.

Nearly all hydrogen produced today is made using an industrial process called steam-methane reforming, which causes the methane in natural gas to react with steam to create hydrogen and carbon dioxide. However, because natural-gas production and use results in greenhouse gases—methane itself is such a gas—the best way to make hydrogen for clean transportation is through electrolysis.

That process involves splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by using electricity, ideally from renewable sources such as wind and solar power. Electrolysis facilities are growing in number, particularly within renewables-rich Europe, but not yet at the rate needed to supply tens of thousands of ships.

Finally, maritime authorities are only now starting to finalize the safety codes and design standards that will govern how fuel cell ships and fueling stations are built. Pilot projects can quickly adapt to rule changes, but large multimillion-dollar constructions cannot. This regulatory limbo also feeds into the wariness that many shipping companies and port operators feel about hydrogen as a fuel source.

For many people, the word “hydrogen” still evokes visions of the Hindenburg, a hydrogen airship that burst into flames in 1937 when hydrogen technology was still in its infancy. “Everyone references it,” Sookhoo says, with a hint of frustration. Modern hydrogen systems, however, are equipped with ventilators, sensors, and automatic shutdown modes to prevent flammable gas from building up and exploding.

Illustration: MCKIBILLO

Smil Says…

No-fuel megaships would need what we do not have as yet: megabatteries or mega–fuel cells.

However, one segment of the shipping world is readily embracing fuel cells: cruise lines, which face stronger air quality restrictions than other maritime companies. Many cruise ships and ferries don’t use diesel combustion engines. Instead, they have “diesel-electric” power trains. A diesel engine drives an electric generator, which in turn powers large electric motors. Because this platform and fuel cells are both rooted in electricity—not combustion—the new technology can more easily integrate into existing cruise ship designs.

Last fall, Viking Cruises announced plans to build a 900-⁠passenger vessel in Norway that will use fuel cells running on liquid hydrogen for its main propulsion. A competitor, Royal Caribbean Cruises, is installing a fuel cell on a new vessel to supply onboard electricity while stationed in ports, with a longer-term vision of using fuel cells for propulsion.

While fuel cells are early on the adoption curve, battery-powered ships are steadily multiplying, particularly in Norway.

The Scandinavian country has deep pockets to invest in new maritime technologies, thanks to both its sovereign oil fund—which topped US $1 trillion last year—and a tax on ships’ emissions of nitrogen oxides, which are potent greenhouse gases and key ingredients in acid rain. The region also has an abundance of hydropower, which can support more battery-charging stations and hydrogen-production facilities.

Norway’s government plans to have 60 all-electric ferries in its fjords within three years, a target it set following the 2015 launch of MS Ampere , the first midsize commercial ferry to operate fully on battery power.

The Ampere carries 10 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors, each with an output of 450 kW. The ferry fully recharges its batteries overnight but tops off every time it docks, for a period of about 10 minutes.

During trials, this fast-charging system repeatedly disrupted service on the rather small local electric grid. Siemens, which designed the charging infrastructure, fixed the problem by placing a high-capacity lithium-ion battery at each pier, enabling the Ampere to quickly recharge from the battery, while the battery gradually recharged from the grid.

The Ampere was a turning point for battery-powered shipping, says Jostein Bogen, the global product manager for energy storage systems in ABB’s marine and ports division. “The big start came from Norway, but now we see it coming all over the world,” he says from his office in Oslo, citing ABB’s electric ship projects in China, Turkey, and across Europe.

ABB recently converted two diesel ferries, the Tycho Brahe and the Aurora, into the world’s largest battery-driven ferries. The vessels, which connect Denmark and Sweden via the Øresund strait, each carry batteries that can deliver 4.16 MW of power and have a combined storage capacity of 8,320 kWh—equivalent to 10,700 car batteries. The ferries will quickly recharge at automated shore-side stations.

That project hit a snag in mid-2017, when it experienced a technical challenge in connecting and disconnecting the charging cables from the vessel, under certain conditions. The automated system had been tested successfully in a simulated factory environment, but it needed additional testing to make sure it could operate reliably in the real world, ABB said.

After postponing the Tycho Brahe’s launch, the ship operator HH Ferries began sailing the ferry in late 2017 in both full-battery and hybrid modes. ABB said it continues to make adjustments to the charging procedures.

As for container ships, tankers, and bulk carriers—the biggest contributors to the shipping industry’s carbon footprint—zero-emissions technologies may still be years away. But early projects with ferries and cruise ships could help convince shipbuilders and operators that fuel cells, batteries, and other technologies are viable alternatives—particularly where there is access to low-cost energy sources, or where ship operators can pass on additional costs associated with each voyage to their supply chain.

“Niche sectors have the ability to do this and drive the innovation,” says Palmer of Lloyd’s Register.

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[hudsonespie]

BP Aims to be Net Zero by 2050

BP’s new CEO Bernard Looney has announced the company's new ambition to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero. 

The structure of BP’s organization – and of much of the industry – has been broadly the same for more than a century, split into separate organizations – upstream, downstream, and other businesses. To deliver its new ambition and aims, BP will now undergo a fundamental reorganisation. BP will now fundamentally reorganize and form four business groups: Production & Operations; Customers & Products; Gas & Low Carbon Energy and Innovation & Engineering.

The ambition is supported by 10 aims: 

Five aims to get BP to net zero: 1. Net zero across BP’s operations on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner.  2. Net zero on carbon in BP’s oil and gas production on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner. 3. 50 percent cut in the carbon intensity of products BP sells by 2050 or sooner. 4. Install methane measurement at all BP’s major oil and gas processing sites by 2023 and reduce methane intensity of operations by 50 percent. 5. Increase the proportion of investment into non-oil and gas businesses over time.

Five aims to help the world get to net zero: 6. More active advocacy for policies that support net zero, including carbon pricing. 7. Further incentivize BP’s workforce to deliver aims and mobilize them to advocate for net zero. 8. Set new expectations for relationships with trade associations. 9. Aim to be recognized as a leader for transparency of reporting, including supporting the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. 10. Launch a new team to help countries, cities and large companies decarbonize.

Looney said: “The world’s carbon budget is finite and running out fast. We need a rapid transition to net zero. We all want energy that is reliable and affordable, but that is no longer enough. It must also be cleaner. To deliver that, trillions of dollars will need to be invested in replumbing and rewiring the world’s energy system. It will require nothing short of reimagining energy as we know it.

“This will certainly be a challenge, but also a tremendous opportunity. It is clear to me, and to our stakeholders, that for BP to play our part and serve our purpose, we have to change. And we want to change – this is the right thing for the world and for BP.”

BP’s new ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner covers the greenhouse gas emissions from its operations worldwide, currently around 55 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MteCO2e) a year, and the carbon in the oil and gas that it produces, equivalent currently to around 360 MteCO2e emissions a year – both on an absolute basis. Taken together, delivery of these aims would equate to a reduction in emissions to net zero from what is currently around 415 MteCO2e a year.  

“This is what we mean by making BP net zero,” said Looney. “It directly addresses all the carbon we get out of the ground as well as all the greenhouse gases we emit from our operations. These will be absolute reductions, which is what the world needs. If this were to happen to every barrel of oil and gas produced, the emissions problem for our sector would be solved. But of course, the world is not that simple. The whole energy system has to be transformed and everyone has a contribution to make – producers and sellers of energy, policy makers and everyone who uses energy.” 

A Major Turnaround

Luke Parker, vice president, corporate analysis, at Wood Mackenzie said: “BP joins Shell, Total, Equinor and Repsol in making a major commitment to reduce its net carbon footprint. This marks a major turnaround in BP’s position. Just 12 months ago former CEO Bob Dudley said the company could not be held accountable for how people use its products. Looney is taking the company in a very different direction.”

Parker added: “It’s an ambition, rather than a target, but the commitment appears to be unconditional. In terms of scale of commitment, this puts BP towards the top of the pack, along with Repsol and Equinor. This will see BP’s business completely transformed over the coming decades: renewables and carbon abatement will get very big, legacy oil and gas will eventually get smaller. But the transition to 2050 is a multi-decade transition - not something that will happen in the next year or so.” 

New Team

Production & Operations will be led by Gordon Birrell and will be BP’s new operational center, bringing its operations together, focused on driving safety, efficiency and value growth. 

Customers & Products will be headed by Emma Delaney and will focus on customers as the driving force for the energy products and services of the future, and on customer experience and expansion in rapidly changing markets. 

Gas & Low Carbon Energy will be led by Dev Sanyal and will unite energy teams currently dispersed around BP to create focused low carbon solutions. It will also pursue opportunities in decarbonisation including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies.

Innovation & Engineering will be headed by David Eyton and will bring added momentum to BP’s venturing and Launchpad investments and act as a catalyst for creating value from disruptive opportunities. It will also house BP’s engineering discipline and safety and operational risk team.

Strategy & Sustainability will be headed by Giulia Chierchia, who is joining BP from McKinsey, and will ensure that sustainability is embedded at the top of BP and provide a single group-wide approach to strategy and capital allocation.

Regions, Cities & Solutions will be led by William Lin and will build relationships with regions, cities and large corporations, aiming to develop integrated energy and carbon solutions that can bring emissions down at scale. 

Trading & Shipping will be led by Carol Howle and will build on BP’s existing deep expertise in its existing business to more effectively help BP capture new commercial opportunities and add value. 

Four teams will serve as enablers of business delivery:

Finance headed by Murray Auchincloss. Legal headed by Eric Nitcher.  People & Culture headed by Kerry Dryburgh. Communications & Advocacy headed by Geoff Morrell.

BP intends to host a capital markets day in September at which the leadership team will set out more information on BP’s strategy and near-term plans.

from Storage Containers https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/bp-aims-to-be-net-zero-by-2050 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[technato]

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener

How these emission-belching behemoths will transition to batteries and fuel cells

Photo: Martin Witte/Alamy

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The Big Leagues: The Emma Maersk, one of the world’s largest container ships, is powered by a diesel engine. The ship can transport 11,000 containers with a crew of 13.

At the pier outside Amsterdam’s central train station, commuters stride aboard the IJveer 61. The squat ferry crisscrosses the waterfront, taking passengers from the city’s historic center to the borough of Noord. Beneath their feet, two electric motors propel the ferry through the gray-green waters, powered by 26 lithium-ion polymer batteries and a pair of diesel generators.

Hybrid vessels like the IJveer 61 are increasingly common in the Netherlands, where officials are pushing to limit toxic air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime sector. Patrol vessels and work ships are turning more to batteries and using less petroleum-based fuel; so are crane-carrying boats that pluck fallen bicycles from Amsterdam’s famous canals.

Some of these vessels recharge during off-hours, pulling from the harbor’s electric grid connection. In other boats, diesel generators recharge batteries as they run. As the harbor’s electricity infrastructure expands, more vessels could ditch diesel entirely, says Walter van der Pennen from EST-Floattech, the Dutch energy-storage company that oversaw installation of the IJveer 61’s series hybrid system.

“The next step is to move away from hybrids,” he tells me one drizzly afternoon from a café overlooking the waterway. “For all of the vessels here, it’s perfectly suitable to go full electric.”

Meanwhile, at a nearby shipyard, another company is building what it dubs the “Tesla ship”—an all-electric river barge, like a Model 3 for the sea. Its makers at Dutch manufacturer Port-Liner expect to complete five small barges and two large barges this year to edge out the area’s diesel-burning, soot-spewing versions.

These Dutch vessels mark the beginnings of a much larger energy transformation sweeping the world’s maritime shipping industry. As emissions climb and environmental policies strengthen, shipping companies and engineers are accelerating their pursuit of so-called zero-emissions technologies—a category that includes massive battery packs and fuel cells that run on hydrogen or ammonia. Hundreds of large cargo ships are also switching to liquefied natural gas, which produces less toxic air pollution than the typical maritime “bunker fuel” and is widely considered a stepping-stone on the path to full decarbonization.

“It’s been a journey for the shipping industry, but there’s now a broad understanding and agreement that there is a need to do something” about climate change, says Katharine Palmer, global sustainability manager at the shipping services company Lloyd’s Register. “Now it’s a case of working out what that ‘something’ is.”

Unlike vehicles and power plants, cargo ships remain conveniently out of sight to most of us. Yet shipping is the linchpin of our modern economy, moving about 90 percent of all globally traded goods, including T-shirts, bananas, and smartphones along with medicine, fuel, and even livestock. Around 93,000 container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers, and other vessels now ply the world’s waterways, delivering some 10.3 billion metric tons of goods in 2016, according to United Nations trade statistics. That’s four times the cargo delivered in 1970.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Nearly all cargo ships use diesel combustion engines to turn the propellers, plus diesel generators that power onboard lighting systems and communications equipment. Many vessels still burn heavy bunker fuel, a viscous, carbon-intensive petroleum product that’s left from the crude oil refining process.

As a result, maritime shipping contributes a sizable share—about 2 to 3 percent—of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. body that regulates the industry. Left unchecked, however, that share could soar to 17 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050 as trade increases and other industries curtail their carbon footprints, the European Parliament [PDF] found in a 2015 report.

With pressure mounting to tackle climate change, the IMO has taken steps to limit emissions, including requiring newly constructed ships to meet energy efficiency guidelines. In April, regulators adopted a landmark agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by at least 50 percent by 2050 from 2008 levels. Yet to align with the Paris climate agreement’s goals of keeping global warming to “well below” 2 °C above preindustrial levels, the industry must go even further, slashing its emissions to zero by midcentury. That means all vessels, from small ferries to ocean-faring cargo ships, must adopt zero-emissions systems in the coming decades, according to a research consortium comprised of major shipping companies and academic institutes.

Many shipbuilders and owners still aren’t convinced that such an overhaul is possible. But Palmer and other researchers say the technologies already exist to achieve this clean-shipping transformation. The challenge now, she says, is “making those technologies economically feasible, as well as being able to scale them.”

To get a glimpse of shipping’s future, I visited Hydrogenics, one of the world’s largest hydrogen producers and fuel cell manufacturers, at its headquarters near Toronto.

Among shipping experts, hydrogen fuel cells are considered the front-runner for zero-emissions technologies on larger, long-distance ships. Briefly, fuel cells get their charge not by plugging into the wall, as batteries do, but from hydrogen. With onboard hydrogen storage, fuel cells can produce power for the duration of most trips. Today’s batteries, by contrast, can’t make it very far without stopping to charge—and that’s impossible if a ship is in the middle of the ocean.

Cargo ships are “just too power hungry, and the run times are too large,” Ryan Sookhoo, Hydrogenics’ director of business development, tells me. “When we look at the marine space, we see it as a natural adopter [of fuel cells]. There’s only certain technologies that will be able to deliver.”

Hydrogenics has installed its fuel cells in buses, trains, cars, a four-seater airplane, speedboats, and a research vessel in Turkey. In recent years, the company has partnered with the U.S. energy and transportation departments and Sandia National Laboratories to build and test a fuel cell system that could eventually propel a cargo ship.

Sookhoo leads me through the company’s cavernous research and development wing, out a back door, and into the rain. A bright-blue 20-foot shipping container sits in the parking lot, labeled “Clean Power” in white block letters.

  Photos: Top: Hydrogenics; Bottom: ABB

Fuel Box: Hydrogenics hopes its fuel cell, which lives inside of a shipping container [top], can provide propulsion for cargo ships. When hydrogen gas flows into the cell, an anode breaks molecules within the gas into ions and electrons. Ions pass directly to the cathode, but electrons are blocked by a membrane and must first travel through a circuit, producing electricity. When the electrons finally reach the cathode, they reunite with ions to form water [bottom].

We step inside. In a back corner, four 30-kilowatt fuel cell modules are stacked on sliding shelves, like computer servers on a rack. Elsewhere in the container are 15 cylindrical tanks full of compressed hydrogen gas.

As it’s set up now, the blue container works as a generator. But unlike its diesel counterparts, it doesn’t emit any sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, or carbon dioxide—only a little heat and water, which is vented out the container’s side like mist in a steam room.

Fuel cells have three key components: a negative post, or anode; a positive post, or cathode; and a polymer electrolyte membrane, an extremely thin material that resembles plastic kitchen wrap. Hydrogen gas arrives at the anode, where the molecules break down into positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. The membrane allows the positive ions to pass through it into an electrolyte and thence to the cathode; the electrons flow from the anode through an outside circuit, producing current. Finally, at the cathode, the electrons returning from the circuit reunite with the hydrogen ions coming from the anode and, together with oxygen from the air, they form water.

In the container, the electricity produced by the fuel cell flows to a separate rack of power inverters, which change the direct current power to alternating current. That electricity then goes into a transformer, shaped like a chest freezer, and then over to a dozen power outlets on the external wall. A suitcase-size battery, charged by the fuel cell, runs the fans that cool the container and vent any hydrogen that leaks from the tanks.

Before returning to Canada, where the unit was built, this fuel cell system was tested in the Port of Honolulu. The Hawaiian shipping company Young Brothers used it to power refrigerated containers on shore. Eventually, Sookhoo says, Hydrogenics and Sandia plan to assemble these components inside a ship’s engine room to run electric motors that drive the propellers.

About two dozen early projects have shown that fuel cells are technically capable of powering and propelling vessels. The most prominent among them is the Viking Lady, a supply vessel for offshore rigs that launched in Copenhagen in 2009. Its molten carbonate fuel cell, with a power output of 330 kW, uses liquefied natural gas in lieu of hydrogen.

Wärtsilä Corp., the Finnish manufacturer that installed the Viking Lady’s hybrid system, has said its chief challenge was establishing industry-approved technical standards and safety procedures for the first-of-its-kind installation. (Separately, ExxonMobil is testing whether molten carbonate fuel cells could generate electricity from power plant emissions.)

While maritime fuel cells haven’t yet been deployed on a large, commercial scale, a recent Sandia study [PDF] suggests that oceangoing ships could feasibly operate using existing hydrogen fuel cell technologies. For instance, researchers studied the Emma Maersk, a mega–container ship with an 81-⁠MW diesel propulsion engine that routinely travels some 5,000 nautical miles (about 9,000 kilometers) from Malaysia to Egypt. Based on the available volume and mass of the ship’s engine and fuel rooms, they found the vessel could support enough fuel cell modules and hydrogen tanks to complete one of these long-distance trips before needing to refuel—on paper, at least.

Joseph W. Pratt, who coauthored the study, says he had expected to find that fuel cell systems simply wouldn’t work on bigger ships or on longer voyages. He thought that as the ship scaled up, the amount of required fuel cells, tanks, and storage equipment would become too heavy, or too voluminous, to fit within the vessel.

“The biggest surprise was that there wasn’t a limit,” Pratt recalls from San Francisco, where he recently founded Golden Gate Zero Emission Marine to provide fuel cell power systems and fueling logistics.

His team also studied batteries, which proved the better option for high-power vessels making short trips, such as ferries or yachts. If ships can recharge at point A and again at point B, they don’t need to carry hydrogen storage tanks, which saves space and weight. And batteries are less expensive than fuel cells.

1/5

The hybrid IJveer 60 carries passengers and cars around Amsterdam along with its sister ferry, the IJveer 61. Photo: EST-Floattach

2/5

MS Ampere was the world’s first commercial ferry to run exclusively on batteries. Photo: NCE Maritime CleanTech

3/5

After delays, the battery-driven Tycho Brahe now runs a regular route between Sweden and Denmark. Photo: John Peter/Alamy

4/5

The Viking Lady is powered by a molten carbonate fuel cell and transports supplies to offshore rigs. Photo: Wärtsilä Corp.

5/5

Port-Liner’s all-electric “Tesla ship” should begin sailing this year. Photo: Port-Liner

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Sookhoo says future zero-emissions cargo ships will likely use both technologies. Batteries can provide the initial spike of electricity that fires up the electric motor and puts the ship in motion—much as a car battery functions—while fuel cells will serve as the “range extender” that takes over as the battery winds down.

Given the potential, why aren’t more cargo shipbuilders ditching diesel and switching to fuel cells?

The technology is still prohibitively expensive, because fuel cells aren’t yet mass-produced. On a dollar-per-kilowatt-hour basis, the electricity cost from a fuel cell is roughly double or triple that from a diesel generator, Sookhoo estimates.

Second, hydrogen refueling stations are scarce and unevenly distributed around the world, whereas bunker fuel remains cheap and ubiquitous. For fuel-cell-powered freighters to succeed, ports will need to pipe in and store more hydrogen, and hydrogen production must ramp up dramatically.

Nearly all hydrogen produced today is made using an industrial process called steam-methane reforming, which causes the methane in natural gas to react with steam to create hydrogen and carbon dioxide. However, because natural-gas production and use results in greenhouse gases—methane itself is such a gas—the best way to make hydrogen for clean transportation is through electrolysis.

That process involves splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by using electricity, ideally from renewable sources such as wind and solar power. Electrolysis facilities are growing in number, particularly within renewables-rich Europe, but not yet at the rate needed to supply tens of thousands of ships.

Finally, maritime authorities are only now starting to finalize the safety codes and design standards that will govern how fuel cell ships and fueling stations are built. Pilot projects can quickly adapt to rule changes, but large multimillion-dollar constructions cannot. This regulatory limbo also feeds into the wariness that many shipping companies and port operators feel about hydrogen as a fuel source.

For many people, the word “hydrogen” still evokes visions of the Hindenburg, a hydrogen airship that burst into flames in 1937 when hydrogen technology was still in its infancy. “Everyone references it,” Sookhoo says, with a hint of frustration. Modern hydrogen systems, however, are equipped with ventilators, sensors, and automatic shutdown modes to prevent flammable gas from building up and exploding.

Illustration: MCKIBILLO

Smil Says…

No-fuel megaships would need what we do not have as yet: megabatteries or mega–fuel cells.

However, one segment of the shipping world is readily embracing fuel cells: cruise lines, which face stronger air quality restrictions than other maritime companies. Many cruise ships and ferries don’t use diesel combustion engines. Instead, they have “diesel-electric” power trains. A diesel engine drives an electric generator, which in turn powers large electric motors. Because this platform and fuel cells are both rooted in electricity—not combustion—the new technology can more easily integrate into existing cruise ship designs.

Last fall, Viking Cruises announced plans to build a 900-⁠passenger vessel in Norway that will use fuel cells running on liquid hydrogen for its main propulsion. A competitor, Royal Caribbean Cruises, is installing a fuel cell on a new vessel to supply onboard electricity while stationed in ports, with a longer-term vision of using fuel cells for propulsion.

While fuel cells are early on the adoption curve, battery-powered ships are steadily multiplying, particularly in Norway.

The Scandinavian country has deep pockets to invest in new maritime technologies, thanks to both its sovereign oil fund—which topped US $1 trillion last year—and a tax on ships’ emissions of nitrogen oxides, which are potent greenhouse gases and key ingredients in acid rain. The region also has an abundance of hydropower, which can support more battery-charging stations and hydrogen-production facilities.

Norway’s government plans to have 60 all-electric ferries in its fjords within three years, a target it set following the 2015 launch of MS Ampere , the first midsize commercial ferry to operate fully on battery power.

The Ampere carries 10 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors, each with an output of 450 kW. The ferry fully recharges its batteries overnight but tops off every time it docks, for a period of about 10 minutes.

During trials, this fast-charging system repeatedly disrupted service on the rather small local electric grid. Siemens, which designed the charging infrastructure, fixed the problem by placing a high-capacity lithium-ion battery at each pier, enabling the Ampere to quickly recharge from the battery, while the battery gradually recharged from the grid.

The Ampere was a turning point for battery-powered shipping, says Jostein Bogen, the global product manager for energy storage systems in ABB’s marine and ports division. “The big start came from Norway, but now we see it coming all over the world,” he says from his office in Oslo, citing ABB’s electric ship projects in China, Turkey, and across Europe.

ABB recently converted two diesel ferries, the Tycho Brahe and the Aurora, into the world’s largest battery-driven ferries. The vessels, which connect Denmark and Sweden via the Øresund strait, each carry batteries that can deliver 4.16 MW of power and have a combined storage capacity of 8,320 kWh—equivalent to 10,700 car batteries. The ferries will quickly recharge at automated shore-side stations.

That project hit a snag in mid-2017, when it experienced a technical challenge in connecting and disconnecting the charging cables from the vessel, under certain conditions. The automated system had been tested successfully in a simulated factory environment, but it needed additional testing to make sure it could operate reliably in the real world, ABB said.

After postponing the Tycho Brahe’s launch, the ship operator HH Ferries began sailing the ferry in late 2017 in both full-battery and hybrid modes. ABB said it continues to make adjustments to the charging procedures.

As for container ships, tankers, and bulk carriers—the biggest contributors to the shipping industry’s carbon footprint—zero-emissions technologies may still be years away. But early projects with ferries and cruise ships could help convince shipbuilders and operators that fuel cells, batteries, and other technologies are viable alternatives—particularly where there is access to low-cost energy sources, or where ship operators can pass on additional costs associated with each voyage to their supply chain.

“Niche sectors have the ability to do this and drive the innovation,” says Palmer of Lloyd’s Register.

This article appears in the June 2018 print issue as “The Cleaner, Greener Cargo Ship.”

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener

How these emission-belching behemoths will transition to batteries and fuel cells

Photo: Martin Witte/Alamy

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Photo: Martin Witte/Alamy

The Big Leagues: The Emma Maersk, one of the world’s largest container ships, is powered by a diesel engine. The ship can transport 11,000 containers with a crew of 13.

At the pier outside Amsterdam’s central train station, commuters stride aboard the IJveer 61. The squat ferry crisscrosses the waterfront, taking passengers from the city’s historic center to the borough of Noord. Beneath their feet, two electric motors propel the ferry through the gray-green waters, powered by 26 lithium-ion polymer batteries and a pair of diesel generators.

Hybrid vessels like the IJveer 61 are increasingly common in the Netherlands, where officials are pushing to limit toxic air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime sector. Patrol vessels and work ships are turning more to batteries and using less petroleum-based fuel; so are crane-carrying boats that pluck fallen bicycles from Amsterdam’s famous canals.

Some of these vessels recharge during off-hours, pulling from the harbor’s electric grid connection. In other boats, diesel generators recharge batteries as they run. As the harbor’s electricity infrastructure expands, more vessels could ditch diesel entirely, says Walter van der Pennen from EST-Floattech, the Dutch energy-storage company that oversaw installation of the IJveer 61’s series hybrid system.

“The next step is to move away from hybrids,” he tells me one drizzly afternoon from a café overlooking the waterway. “For all of the vessels here, it’s perfectly suitable to go full electric.”

Meanwhile, at a nearby shipyard, another company is building what it dubs the “Tesla ship”—an all-electric river barge, like a Model 3 for the sea. Its makers at Dutch manufacturer Port-Liner expect to complete five small barges and two large barges this year to edge out the area’s diesel-burning, soot-spewing versions.

These Dutch vessels mark the beginnings of a much larger energy transformation sweeping the world’s maritime shipping industry. As emissions climb and environmental policies strengthen, shipping companies and engineers are accelerating their pursuit of so-called zero-emissions technologies—a category that includes massive battery packs and fuel cells that run on hydrogen or ammonia. Hundreds of large cargo ships are also switching to liquefied natural gas, which produces less toxic air pollution than the typical maritime “bunker fuel” and is widely considered a stepping-stone on the path to full decarbonization.

“It’s been a journey for the shipping industry, but there’s now a broad understanding and agreement that there is a need to do something” about climate change, says Katharine Palmer, global sustainability manager at the shipping services company Lloyd’s Register. “Now it’s a case of working out what that ‘something’ is.”

Unlike vehicles and power plants, cargo ships remain conveniently out of sight to most of us. Yet shipping is the linchpin of our modern economy, moving about 90 percent of all globally traded goods, including T-shirts, bananas, and smartphones along with medicine, fuel, and even livestock. Around 93,000 container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers, and other vessels now ply the world’s waterways, delivering some 10.3 billion metric tons of goods in 2016, according to United Nations trade statistics. That’s four times the cargo delivered in 1970.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Global Goods: The world’s busiest maritime trade route is the path from Asia to North America. Other popular routes connect Asia to northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.

Nearly all cargo ships use diesel combustion engines to turn the propellers, plus diesel generators that power onboard lighting systems and communications equipment. Many vessels still burn heavy bunker fuel, a viscous, carbon-intensive petroleum product that’s left from the crude oil refining process.

As a result, maritime shipping contributes a sizable share—about 2 to 3 percent—of annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. body that regulates the industry. Left unchecked, however, that share could soar to 17 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050 as trade increases and other industries curtail their carbon footprints, the European Parliament [PDF] found in a 2015 report.

With pressure mounting to tackle climate change, the IMO has taken steps to limit emissions, including requiring newly constructed ships to meet energy efficiency guidelines. In April, regulators adopted a landmark agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by at least 50 percent by 2050 from 2008 levels. Yet to align with the Paris climate agreement’s goals of keeping global warming to “well below” 2 °C above preindustrial levels, the industry must go even further, slashing its emissions to zero by midcentury. That means all vessels, from small ferries to ocean-faring cargo ships, must adopt zero-emissions systems in the coming decades, according to a research consortium comprised of major shipping companies and academic institutes.

Many shipbuilders and owners still aren’t convinced that such an overhaul is possible. But Palmer and other researchers say the technologies already exist to achieve this clean-shipping transformation. The challenge now, she says, is “making those technologies economically feasible, as well as being able to scale them.”

To get a glimpse of shipping’s future, I visited Hydrogenics, one of the world’s largest hydrogen producers and fuel cell manufacturers, at its headquarters near Toronto.

Among shipping experts, hydrogen fuel cells are considered the front-runner for zero-emissions technologies on larger, long-distance ships. Briefly, fuel cells get their charge not by plugging into the wall, as batteries do, but from hydrogen. With onboard hydrogen storage, fuel cells can produce power for the duration of most trips. Today’s batteries, by contrast, can’t make it very far without stopping to charge—and that’s impossible if a ship is in the middle of the ocean.

Cargo ships are “just too power hungry, and the run times are too large,” Ryan Sookhoo, Hydrogenics’ director of business development, tells me. “When we look at the marine space, we see it as a natural adopter [of fuel cells]. There’s only certain technologies that will be able to deliver.”

Hydrogenics has installed its fuel cells in buses, trains, cars, a four-seater airplane, speedboats, and a research vessel in Turkey. In recent years, the company has partnered with the U.S. energy and transportation departments and Sandia National Laboratories to build and test a fuel cell system that could eventually propel a cargo ship.

Sookhoo leads me through the company’s cavernous research and development wing, out a back door, and into the rain. A bright-blue 20-foot shipping container sits in the parking lot, labeled “Clean Power” in white block letters.

  Photos: Top: Hydrogenics; Bottom: ABB

Fuel Box: Hydrogenics hopes its fuel cell, which lives inside of a shipping container [top], can provide propulsion for cargo ships. When hydrogen gas flows into the cell, an anode breaks molecules within the gas into ions and electrons. Ions pass directly to the cathode, but electrons are blocked by a membrane and must first travel through a circuit, producing electricity. When the electrons finally reach the cathode, they reunite with ions to form water [bottom].

We step inside. In a back corner, four 30-kilowatt fuel cell modules are stacked on sliding shelves, like computer servers on a rack. Elsewhere in the container are 15 cylindrical tanks full of compressed hydrogen gas.

As it’s set up now, the blue container works as a generator. But unlike its diesel counterparts, it doesn’t emit any sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, or carbon dioxide—only a little heat and water, which is vented out the container’s side like mist in a steam room.

Fuel cells have three key components: a negative post, or anode; a positive post, or cathode; and a polymer electrolyte membrane, an extremely thin material that resembles plastic kitchen wrap. Hydrogen gas arrives at the anode, where the molecules break down into positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. The membrane allows the positive ions to pass through it into an electrolyte and thence to the cathode; the electrons flow from the anode through an outside circuit, producing current. Finally, at the cathode, the electrons returning from the circuit reunite with the hydrogen ions coming from the anode and, together with oxygen from the air, they form water.

In the container, the electricity produced by the fuel cell flows to a separate rack of power inverters, which change the direct current power to alternating current. That electricity then goes into a transformer, shaped like a chest freezer, and then over to a dozen power outlets on the external wall. A suitcase-size battery, charged by the fuel cell, runs the fans that cool the container and vent any hydrogen that leaks from the tanks.

Before returning to Canada, where the unit was built, this fuel cell system was tested in the Port of Honolulu. The Hawaiian shipping company Young Brothers used it to power refrigerated containers on shore. Eventually, Sookhoo says, Hydrogenics and Sandia plan to assemble these components inside a ship’s engine room to run electric motors that drive the propellers.

About two dozen early projects have shown that fuel cells are technically capable of powering and propelling vessels. The most prominent among them is the Viking Lady, a supply vessel for offshore rigs that launched in Copenhagen in 2009. Its molten carbonate fuel cell, with a power output of 330 kW, uses liquefied natural gas in lieu of hydrogen.

Wärtsilä Corp., the Finnish manufacturer that installed the Viking Lady’s hybrid system, has said its chief challenge was establishing industry-approved technical standards and safety procedures for the first-of-its-kind installation. (Separately, ExxonMobil is testing whether molten carbonate fuel cells could generate electricity from power plant emissions.)

While maritime fuel cells haven’t yet been deployed on a large, commercial scale, a recent Sandia study [PDF] suggests that oceangoing ships could feasibly operate using existing hydrogen fuel cell technologies. For instance, researchers studied the Emma Maersk, a mega–container ship with an 81-⁠MW diesel propulsion engine that routinely travels some 5,000 nautical miles (about 9,000 kilometers) from Malaysia to Egypt. Based on the available volume and mass of the ship’s engine and fuel rooms, they found the vessel could support enough fuel cell modules and hydrogen tanks to complete one of these long-distance trips before needing to refuel—on paper, at least.

Joseph W. Pratt, who coauthored the study, says he had expected to find that fuel cell systems simply wouldn’t work on bigger ships or on longer voyages. He thought that as the ship scaled up, the amount of required fuel cells, tanks, and storage equipment would become too heavy, or too voluminous, to fit within the vessel.

“The biggest surprise was that there wasn’t a limit,” Pratt recalls from San Francisco, where he recently founded Golden Gate Zero Emission Marine to provide fuel cell power systems and fueling logistics.

His team also studied batteries, which proved the better option for high-power vessels making short trips, such as ferries or yachts. If ships can recharge at point A and again at point B, they don’t need to carry hydrogen storage tanks, which saves space and weight. And batteries are less expensive than fuel cells.

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The hybrid IJveer 60 carries passengers and cars around Amsterdam along with its sister ferry, the IJveer 61. Photo: EST-Floattach

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MS Ampere was the world’s first commercial ferry to run exclusively on batteries. Photo: NCE Maritime CleanTech

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After delays, the battery-driven Tycho Brahe now runs a regular route between Sweden and Denmark. Photo: John Peter/Alamy

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The Viking Lady is powered by a molten carbonate fuel cell and transports supplies to offshore rigs. Photo: Wärtsilä Corp.

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Port-Liner’s all-electric “Tesla ship” should begin sailing this year. Photo: Port-Liner

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Sookhoo says future zero-emissions cargo ships will likely use both technologies. Batteries can provide the initial spike of electricity that fires up the electric motor and puts the ship in motion—much as a car battery functions—while fuel cells will serve as the “range extender” that takes over as the battery winds down.

Given the potential, why aren’t more cargo shipbuilders ditching diesel and switching to fuel cells?

The technology is still prohibitively expensive, because fuel cells aren’t yet mass-produced. On a dollar-per-kilowatt-hour basis, the electricity cost from a fuel cell is roughly double or triple that from a diesel generator, Sookhoo estimates.

Second, hydrogen refueling stations are scarce and unevenly distributed around the world, whereas bunker fuel remains cheap and ubiquitous. For fuel-cell-powered freighters to succeed, ports will need to pipe in and store more hydrogen, and hydrogen production must ramp up dramatically.

Nearly all hydrogen produced today is made using an industrial process called steam-methane reforming, which causes the methane in natural gas to react with steam to create hydrogen and carbon dioxide. However, because natural-gas production and use results in greenhouse gases—methane itself is such a gas—the best way to make hydrogen for clean transportation is through electrolysis.

That process involves splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by using electricity, ideally from renewable sources such as wind and solar power. Electrolysis facilities are growing in number, particularly within renewables-rich Europe, but not yet at the rate needed to supply tens of thousands of ships.

Finally, maritime authorities are only now starting to finalize the safety codes and design standards that will govern how fuel cell ships and fueling stations are built. Pilot projects can quickly adapt to rule changes, but large multimillion-dollar constructions cannot. This regulatory limbo also feeds into the wariness that many shipping companies and port operators feel about hydrogen as a fuel source.

For many people, the word “hydrogen” still evokes visions of the Hindenburg, a hydrogen airship that burst into flames in 1937 when hydrogen technology was still in its infancy. “Everyone references it,” Sookhoo says, with a hint of frustration. Modern hydrogen systems, however, are equipped with ventilators, sensors, and automatic shutdown modes to prevent flammable gas from building up and exploding.

Illustration: MCKIBILLO

Smil Says…

No-fuel megaships would need what we do not have as yet: megabatteries or mega–fuel cells.

However, one segment of the shipping world is readily embracing fuel cells: cruise lines, which face stronger air quality restrictions than other maritime companies. Many cruise ships and ferries don’t use diesel combustion engines. Instead, they have “diesel-electric” power trains. A diesel engine drives an electric generator, which in turn powers large electric motors. Because this platform and fuel cells are both rooted in electricity—not combustion—the new technology can more easily integrate into existing cruise ship designs.

Last fall, Viking Cruises announced plans to build a 900-⁠passenger vessel in Norway that will use fuel cells running on liquid hydrogen for its main propulsion. A competitor, Royal Caribbean Cruises, is installing a fuel cell on a new vessel to supply onboard electricity while stationed in ports, with a longer-term vision of using fuel cells for propulsion.

While fuel cells are early on the adoption curve, battery-powered ships are steadily multiplying, particularly in Norway.

The Scandinavian country has deep pockets to invest in new maritime technologies, thanks to both its sovereign oil fund—which topped US $1 trillion last year—and a tax on ships’ emissions of nitrogen oxides, which are potent greenhouse gases and key ingredients in acid rain. The region also has an abundance of hydropower, which can support more battery-charging stations and hydrogen-production facilities.

Norway’s government plans to have 60 all-electric ferries in its fjords within three years, a target it set following the 2015 launch of MS Ampere , the first midsize commercial ferry to operate fully on battery power.

The Ampere carries 10 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries to power two electric motors, each with an output of 450 kW. The ferry fully recharges its batteries overnight but tops off every time it docks, for a period of about 10 minutes.

During trials, this fast-charging system repeatedly disrupted service on the rather small local electric grid. Siemens, which designed the charging infrastructure, fixed the problem by placing a high-capacity lithium-ion battery at each pier, enabling the Ampere to quickly recharge from the battery, while the battery gradually recharged from the grid.

The Ampere was a turning point for battery-powered shipping, says Jostein Bogen, the global product manager for energy storage systems in ABB’s marine and ports division. “The big start came from Norway, but now we see it coming all over the world,” he says from his office in Oslo, citing ABB’s electric ship projects in China, Turkey, and across Europe.

ABB recently converted two diesel ferries, the Tycho Brahe and the Aurora, into the world’s largest battery-driven ferries. The vessels, which connect Denmark and Sweden via the Øresund strait, each carry batteries that can deliver 4.16 MW of power and have a combined storage capacity of 8,320 kWh—equivalent to 10,700 car batteries. The ferries will quickly recharge at automated shore-side stations.

That project hit a snag in mid-2017, when it experienced a technical challenge in connecting and disconnecting the charging cables from the vessel, under certain conditions. The automated system had been tested successfully in a simulated factory environment, but it needed additional testing to make sure it could operate reliably in the real world, ABB said.

After postponing the Tycho Brahe’s launch, the ship operator HH Ferries began sailing the ferry in late 2017 in both full-battery and hybrid modes. ABB said it continues to make adjustments to the charging procedures.

As for container ships, tankers, and bulk carriers—the biggest contributors to the shipping industry’s carbon footprint—zero-emissions technologies may still be years away. But early projects with ferries and cruise ships could help convince shipbuilders and operators that fuel cells, batteries, and other technologies are viable alternatives—particularly where there is access to low-cost energy sources, or where ship operators can pass on additional costs associated with each voyage to their supply chain.

“Niche sectors have the ability to do this and drive the innovation,” says Palmer of Lloyd’s Register.

This article appears in the June 2018 print issue as “The Cleaner, Greener Cargo Ship.”

The Struggle to Make Diesel-Guzzling Cargo Ships Greener syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com