18 ms·

Yara birkeland, the first autonomous and emission-free containership

143 points by tomohawk 5y ago

rp1 5y ago
That is a big ship! It looks like it's only going to do a short run between ports in Norway, but that seems like a serious commitment to a renewable future. Kudos to the team.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I think it is around the size of a medium-to-large-ish ferry, unfortunately, not really competitive with big-time cargo shipping. (I say I think because ferries are generally measured in "people" rather than "TEU" so it is hard to make a direct comparison, but the sizes are about right). Ships are just big by their nature. But it is a step in the right direction, hopefully this will be a testbed for some tech that can be used in bigger boats.
- notatoad 5y ago
  >That is a big ship! It is, and it's very cool to see a ship of this size being built as electric and autonomous. but just for a sense of scale the Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez has a capacity of 20124 TEU. This ship has a capacity of 120 TEU. Granted that is one of the biggest ships in existence, but this one is a couple orders of magnitude smaller. Perfectly suited to a small regional route in Norway.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Among container ships this is very small. I would hesitate to call it a real container ship because it doesn’t carry even 1000 TEU, which would itself be very small even for smaller ports. This ship only does a 7 nautical mile run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland) because battery technology is simply not practical for long distances.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
    - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
      It's not going to be, sorry. Having batteries small and light enough for practical large container ships, or transatlantic aircraft, would literally mean reducing the battery in a Tesla down to the size of two gallons of milk. And that is way beyond even the most optimistic estimates of battery technology development. If you look at the cool improvement graphs shown by battery manufacturers, it's always kWh per dollar that is improving. In terms of energy per weight, the best we have commercially is NCA batteries at 220 Wh/kg. The best we have on the prototype stage in laboratories is around 400 Wh/kg, but those last less than a hundred cycles. The theoretical maximum is that of a lithium-air battery, where people have demonstrated 1600 Wh/kg in the lab, but they are not rechargeable. Even if we could somehow make those rechargable, a standard Panamax container ship would require 50 000 tonnes of batteries. But it has a capacity of 52 000 tonnes. So with the most extreme revolution in battery technology, we could just barely make a battery powered container ship that carried 96% batteries and 4% actual cargo.
  - incompatible 5y ago
    The article says "7 nm for Herøya – Brevik and 30 nm Herøya – Larvik."
blunte 5y ago
Very cool tech, but this use case - shipping fertilizer around - is a problem perhaps better solved by reducing or eliminating the need for fertilizer. https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-ch...
- sircastor 5y ago
  I had this coworker who frequently shared their thoughts on resolving ecology issues and at some point it just started to come across as “everyone should just lay down and die so we stop having a negative impact on the environment.” I appreciate we have a very long way to go to resolve our environmental impact, and that the most effective means are wholesale abandonment of many practices, but this kind of logic always strikes me as privileged, impractical, and inconsiderate of its effect on people. Life has to be worth living if you want to convince people they should ensure it can happen.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    The GP provided a cogent argument regarding need for fertilizer and its climate impact. I don't see any connection between what they posted and the parent, which sets up a strawperson and tries to hang it on the GP (and a coworker), and contributes nothing to our knowledge.
  - virgildotcodes 5y ago
    I mean, can we agree that life would still be worth living without the majority of the luxurious crap that has come into being just in the last century? Was life not worth living for Homo sapiens for the ~200k years prior? Not to mention that if our alternative is to have the majority of humanity die in a global ecological and social collapse, I don’t think anyone could think that’s a better option and more worth living for.
    - vimy 5y ago
      The doomsday talk is spread by the media but it’s not what the science tells us. The majority of humanity isn’t going to die. That’s utter nonsense. And no, life without “luxurious crap” would suck hard. I’ll pass.
coolspot 5y ago
Not world’s first emission-free cargo ship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Also the German Otto Hahn and Japanese Mutsu. All three of the Western-alliance ships had significant technical as well as cost problems. The Hahn and Mutsu were refitted with conventional propulstion, the Savannah retired and now a museum ship in Baltimore, MD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civilian_nuclear_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... TFA does make the dual claim for the Birkeland of being both autonomous and emissions-free. Though one might make a similar argument of barge traffic drawn by electrically-powered "mules". Or possibly even their non-electrified original inspirations.
- myself248 5y ago
  Arguably every ship that ever sailed prior to the invention of engines was "emission-free" by most standards.
blobbers 5y ago
The hijackers off the horn of Africa are going to have to start hiring programmers. The next version of the movie Captain Phillips is going to be some crossover with the original cast of Hackers? Hijackers...Hackers... Hackjackers? Hihackers?
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Look at me, I am sudo now
zeristor 5y ago
No one has mentioned it, perhaps it is too obvious but a key difference is that with cars you can use regenerative breaking to convert kinetic energy back to electrical energy. I don't think ships stop and start nearly as much as cars, I guess a propeller could be used as a regenerative break, I don't think it would add much to the efficiency though.
TravonteWells 5y ago
Incredible what corporations can accomplish for humanity when they are unhindered by their government.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
siruncledrew 5y ago
How long would it take to charge the batteries?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That is a very good question. I tried to find you an answer but the only bits about the charging that I could find is that it is fully automatic and that they expect it to happen during the unloading or loading, but not how long that would take.
  - guerby 5y ago
    Video of robotic plug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2CBGVa_kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2CBGVa_kw Worlds largest electric ferry connecting to a automatic robotic charger station Here it says "5 minutes" for charging (15 minutes trip): https://press.siemens.com/global/en/feature/pioneer-position-green-solutions-shipbuilding-industry https://press.siemens.com/global/en/feature/pioneer-position... "At nearly 98 meters long and 16 meters wide, the Elektra can transport up to 90 cars per trip. The ferry purchased by FinFerries will now be traveling this route every 15 minutes. The batteries will be charged in roughly five minutes while cars move off and onto the ferry. The two lithium-ion batteries each have a capacity of 530 kWh. "
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      So this one having 7 times larger batteries charged via the same connection would charge in a bit over 30 minutes on a trip like that, and on the route that it is planned for probably more like several hours, which seems reasonable given that they also need to load and unload.
- Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
  If you have one charge point at the loading dock and another charge point at the unloading dock (and charge the ship during the average loading / unloading times).. theoretically you can estimate the max range between the two docks where you never have to worry about charging.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
What happens to the battery when its useful life is over?
- natmaka 5y ago
  The recycling industry is growing up: https://northvolt.com/ https://northvolt.com/
- senectus1 5y ago
  biiiig business in battery recycling atm. I imagine that a boat load of battery will be quite attractive based purely on economy of scale benefits.
  - throw63738 5y ago
    Battery recycling in china: guy on backyard strips most valuable parts with hammer and throws 90% of battery into dumpster. It is very lucrative indeed.
- system2 5y ago
  Lithium batteries can be 100% recycled. As mentioned by another user: https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/technology-breakthrough-as-northvolt-produces-first-ever-lithium-ion-battery-cell-with-100-recycled-nickel-manganese-and-cobalt/2-1-1098748 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/technology-br...
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    >> "Northvolt aims to produce cells with 50% recycled material by 2030..." >> "...it has produced its first lithium-ion battery cell using 100% recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt..." >> “The recycling process can recover up to 95% of the metals in a battery..." I can't parse this on a quick skim, probably due to lack of understanding this tech. Looks like operations begin in 2022, so we will see if they are able to be profitable and stay afloat. Hope so, would be great to be able to recycle these batteries. If not, I suspect there will be problems.
mabbo 5y ago
I've often wondered if you could build a serious ocean-going autonomous ship around this size, powered by sails. It would be slow, no doubt, but the variable cost to transport containers would be incredibly low. No energy used, no crew to pay. All you need after that is to have a small fleet of them, and a dock that can do autonomous loading and unloading.
- nradov 5y ago
  The Oceanbird sailing car carrier concept design would appear viable from an engineering standpoint. However I doubt it would be economically viable under current conditions. Publishing the design is probably mostly a PR stunt, and perhaps a hedge against a future carbon emissions tax. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/01/a-new-golden-age-of-sailing-is-here-where-is-the-leadership/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/01/a-ne... Large ocean going ships will never be fully autonomous. Humans are needed to conduct maintenance and repair, which is generally too complex to automate. But automation will reduce the crew needed for standing watch in the engine room and bridge.
  - rixed 5y ago
    Maybe it's worth reminding that a ship in the middle of the ocean is often much farther away from any other human beings than the astronauts on the ISS, and that sending a rescue mission from ashore to fix a leaking pipe would take a long time and a great amount of fuel. Therefore it makes sense to have at least a few people onboard for basic servicing. Also maybe worth remembering that once close to the departing or destination harbour, any large cargo ship met with the harbour pilot team who goes onboard and take responsibility for manoeuvering the ship, so no ship would be unmanned the full course of its journey anyway ; only the easier, longer part.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Yes you could build an autonomous ship in theory, although it should probably be modestly crewed in some areas to avoid piracy. The more immediate likely direction is for wind assisted propulsion rather than totally wind powered ships. There are already ships assisted by sails, rotors, and kites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-assisted_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-assisted_propulsion).
zengid 5y ago
The article mentions 'green ammonia' as a potential fuel source for shipping, and I would imagine that Yara is poised to be a large producer of the fuel. Using ammonia as a fuel source is something I've never heard of, so reading about it is fascinating: https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/ammonia-fuel-future/99/i8 https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/ammonia-fuel-fut...
- leoedin 5y ago
  It's actually a really interesting fuel (well, energy storage medium) with quite high compatibility with our current way of life. The best part is that you can synthesise it without carbon - which means the feedstocks are only really water, air and electricity. The downsides are toxicity (but this is probably manageable) and poor round trip efficiency. If we ever end up with excess energy (eg solar power in summer) then synthesising ammonia could be a good means of long term energy storage with very little capital investment required.
  - audunw 5y ago
    I gotta imagine that the low efficiency can be managed by using batteries whenever possible. There’s already a hybrid ferry in Norway that uses batteries for the first and last part of the trip to avoid emissions near land. Would be perfect if it used ammonia for the middle part of the trip.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      There are lots more than that. See https://energiogklima.no/elektriske-bilferger-i-norge/ https://energiogklima.no/elektriske-bilferger-i-norge/ 42 fully or partially electric ferries now, 15 more by the end of the year.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Currently synthesising ammonia requires hydrogen and that comes from fossil fuels (the main process of extracting that hydrogen is steam reforming of natural gas and, I think, the main carbon emitter from the current ammonia process). Green ammonia would be made with green hydrogen which is made from water with electrolysis with renewable energy. These ideas make it more obvious that any viable solutions to climate change will require a massive increase in energy production. Solar and wind require massive scale and nuclear seems to currently be very hard to set up and unjustifiable if unit costs of electricity go down.
osense 5y ago
I'm surprised to see the service speed listed at 6 knots. Seems quite low for a container ship, no? From my limited anecdotal evidence of having cargo ships pass my sailboat, they're usually doing easily 10-15 knots. I wonder if that's related to battery efficiency being better at lower power consumption? In any case, for a short route mostly in shielded waters, as presented in the article, this doesn't seem like a hige downside. I also have to comment on the "emission-free" moniker. Was the construction of this ship emission-free? Definitely not. Is the maintenance of the ship going to be emission-free? Probably not. I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying to reduce our emissions, but seems like nowadays there's often an almost indistinguishable line between actually trying to produce a sustainable product, and just doing greenwashing to get more government grants and investors onboard.
- Stevvo 5y ago
  Slower speeds are much more efficient. In displacement vessels the energy required is proportional to the square root of the speed.
  - osense 5y ago
    Is this independent of the hull shape and hydrodynamics? Or how does that influence the energy reuirements?
    - Stevvo 5y ago
      It all contributes, and depending on the sea state and heel angles also.
35_candelas 5y ago
In regards to the batteries, I haven't found information on what type of batteries the ship uses. However, new Sodium-ion batteries could be a good option for the ship's requirements. Sodium-ion is heavier than lithium counterparts but should be cheaper (uses sodium instead of lithium, cobalt, etc) and potentially offer greater charge, lifecycle, and safety performance. CATL Sodium-ion news article: https://www.catl.com/en/news/665.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/665.html

143 points by tomohawk 5y ago

rp1 5y ago

That is a big ship! It looks like it's only going to do a short run between ports in Norway, but that seems like a serious commitment to a renewable future. Kudos to the team.

bee_rider 5y ago
I think it is around the size of a medium-to-large-ish ferry, unfortunately, not really competitive with big-time cargo shipping. (I say I think because ferries are generally measured in "people" rather than "TEU" so it is hard to make a direct comparison, but the sizes are about right). Ships are just big by their nature. But it is a step in the right direction, hopefully this will be a testbed for some tech that can be used in bigger boats.
notatoad 5y ago
>That is a big ship! It is, and it's very cool to see a ship of this size being built as electric and autonomous. but just for a sense of scale the Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez has a capacity of 20124 TEU. This ship has a capacity of 120 TEU. Granted that is one of the biggest ships in existence, but this one is a couple orders of magnitude smaller. Perfectly suited to a small regional route in Norway.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Among container ships this is very small. I would hesitate to call it a real container ship because it doesn’t carry even 1000 TEU, which would itself be very small even for smaller ports. This ship only does a 7 nautical mile run (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yara_Birkeland) because battery technology is simply not practical for long distances.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    It's not going to be, sorry. Having batteries small and light enough for practical large container ships, or transatlantic aircraft, would literally mean reducing the battery in a Tesla down to the size of two gallons of milk. And that is way beyond even the most optimistic estimates of battery technology development. If you look at the cool improvement graphs shown by battery manufacturers, it's always kWh per dollar that is improving. In terms of energy per weight, the best we have commercially is NCA batteries at 220 Wh/kg. The best we have on the prototype stage in laboratories is around 400 Wh/kg, but those last less than a hundred cycles. The theoretical maximum is that of a lithium-air battery, where people have demonstrated 1600 Wh/kg in the lab, but they are not rechargeable. Even if we could somehow make those rechargable, a standard Panamax container ship would require 50 000 tonnes of batteries. But it has a capacity of 52 000 tonnes. So with the most extreme revolution in battery technology, we could just barely make a battery powered container ship that carried 96% batteries and 4% actual cargo.
- incompatible 5y ago
  The article says "7 nm for Herøya – Brevik and 30 nm Herøya – Larvik."

blunte 5y ago

Very cool tech, but this use case - shipping fertilizer around - is a problem perhaps better solved by reducing or eliminating the need for fertilizer. https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-ch...

sircastor 5y ago
I had this coworker who frequently shared their thoughts on resolving ecology issues and at some point it just started to come across as “everyone should just lay down and die so we stop having a negative impact on the environment.” I appreciate we have a very long way to go to resolve our environmental impact, and that the most effective means are wholesale abandonment of many practices, but this kind of logic always strikes me as privileged, impractical, and inconsiderate of its effect on people. Life has to be worth living if you want to convince people they should ensure it can happen.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  The GP provided a cogent argument regarding need for fertilizer and its climate impact. I don't see any connection between what they posted and the parent, which sets up a strawperson and tries to hang it on the GP (and a coworker), and contributes nothing to our knowledge.
- virgildotcodes 5y ago
  I mean, can we agree that life would still be worth living without the majority of the luxurious crap that has come into being just in the last century? Was life not worth living for Homo sapiens for the ~200k years prior? Not to mention that if our alternative is to have the majority of humanity die in a global ecological and social collapse, I don’t think anyone could think that’s a better option and more worth living for.
  - vimy 5y ago
    The doomsday talk is spread by the media but it’s not what the science tells us. The majority of humanity isn’t going to die. That’s utter nonsense. And no, life without “luxurious crap” would suck hard. I’ll pass.

coolspot 5y ago

Not world’s first emission-free cargo ship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

dredmorbius 5y ago
Also the German Otto Hahn and Japanese Mutsu. All three of the Western-alliance ships had significant technical as well as cost problems. The Hahn and Mutsu were refitted with conventional propulstion, the Savannah retired and now a museum ship in Baltimore, MD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civilian_nuclear_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... TFA does make the dual claim for the Birkeland of being both autonomous and emissions-free. Though one might make a similar argument of barge traffic drawn by electrically-powered "mules". Or possibly even their non-electrified original inspirations.
myself248 5y ago
Arguably every ship that ever sailed prior to the invention of engines was "emission-free" by most standards.

blobbers 5y ago

The hijackers off the horn of Africa are going to have to start hiring programmers. The next version of the movie Captain Phillips is going to be some crossover with the original cast of Hackers? Hijackers...Hackers... Hackjackers? Hihackers?

jcun4128 5y ago
Look at me, I am sudo now

zeristor 5y ago

No one has mentioned it, perhaps it is too obvious but a key difference is that with cars you can use regenerative breaking to convert kinetic energy back to electrical energy. I don't think ships stop and start nearly as much as cars, I guess a propeller could be used as a regenerative break, I don't think it would add much to the efficiency though.

TravonteWells 5y ago

Incredible what corporations can accomplish for humanity when they are unhindered by their government.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

siruncledrew 5y ago

How long would it take to charge the batteries?

jacquesm 5y ago
That is a very good question. I tried to find you an answer but the only bits about the charging that I could find is that it is fully automatic and that they expect it to happen during the unloading or loading, but not how long that would take.
- guerby 5y ago
  Video of robotic plug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2CBGVa_kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2CBGVa_kw Worlds largest electric ferry connecting to a automatic robotic charger station Here it says "5 minutes" for charging (15 minutes trip): https://press.siemens.com/global/en/feature/pioneer-position-green-solutions-shipbuilding-industry https://press.siemens.com/global/en/feature/pioneer-position... "At nearly 98 meters long and 16 meters wide, the Elektra can transport up to 90 cars per trip. The ferry purchased by FinFerries will now be traveling this route every 15 minutes. The batteries will be charged in roughly five minutes while cars move off and onto the ferry. The two lithium-ion batteries each have a capacity of 530 kWh. "
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    So this one having 7 times larger batteries charged via the same connection would charge in a bit over 30 minutes on a trip like that, and on the route that it is planned for probably more like several hours, which seems reasonable given that they also need to load and unload.
Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
If you have one charge point at the loading dock and another charge point at the unloading dock (and charge the ship during the average loading / unloading times).. theoretically you can estimate the max range between the two docks where you never have to worry about charging.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

What happens to the battery when its useful life is over?

natmaka 5y ago
The recycling industry is growing up: https://northvolt.com/ https://northvolt.com/
senectus1 5y ago
biiiig business in battery recycling atm. I imagine that a boat load of battery will be quite attractive based purely on economy of scale benefits.
- throw63738 5y ago
  Battery recycling in china: guy on backyard strips most valuable parts with hammer and throws 90% of battery into dumpster. It is very lucrative indeed.
system2 5y ago
Lithium batteries can be 100% recycled. As mentioned by another user: https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/technology-breakthrough-as-northvolt-produces-first-ever-lithium-ion-battery-cell-with-100-recycled-nickel-manganese-and-cobalt/2-1-1098748 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/technology-br...
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  >> "Northvolt aims to produce cells with 50% recycled material by 2030..." >> "...it has produced its first lithium-ion battery cell using 100% recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt..." >> “The recycling process can recover up to 95% of the metals in a battery..." I can't parse this on a quick skim, probably due to lack of understanding this tech. Looks like operations begin in 2022, so we will see if they are able to be profitable and stay afloat. Hope so, would be great to be able to recycle these batteries. If not, I suspect there will be problems.

mabbo 5y ago

I've often wondered if you could build a serious ocean-going autonomous ship around this size, powered by sails. It would be slow, no doubt, but the variable cost to transport containers would be incredibly low. No energy used, no crew to pay. All you need after that is to have a small fleet of them, and a dock that can do autonomous loading and unloading.

nradov 5y ago
The Oceanbird sailing car carrier concept design would appear viable from an engineering standpoint. However I doubt it would be economically viable under current conditions. Publishing the design is probably mostly a PR stunt, and perhaps a hedge against a future carbon emissions tax. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/01/a-new-golden-age-of-sailing-is-here-where-is-the-leadership/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/01/a-ne... Large ocean going ships will never be fully autonomous. Humans are needed to conduct maintenance and repair, which is generally too complex to automate. But automation will reduce the crew needed for standing watch in the engine room and bridge.
- rixed 5y ago
  Maybe it's worth reminding that a ship in the middle of the ocean is often much farther away from any other human beings than the astronauts on the ISS, and that sending a rescue mission from ashore to fix a leaking pipe would take a long time and a great amount of fuel. Therefore it makes sense to have at least a few people onboard for basic servicing. Also maybe worth remembering that once close to the departing or destination harbour, any large cargo ship met with the harbour pilot team who goes onboard and take responsibility for manoeuvering the ship, so no ship would be unmanned the full course of its journey anyway ; only the easier, longer part.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Yes you could build an autonomous ship in theory, although it should probably be modestly crewed in some areas to avoid piracy. The more immediate likely direction is for wind assisted propulsion rather than totally wind powered ships. There are already ships assisted by sails, rotors, and kites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-assisted_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-assisted_propulsion).

zengid 5y ago

The article mentions 'green ammonia' as a potential fuel source for shipping, and I would imagine that Yara is poised to be a large producer of the fuel. Using ammonia as a fuel source is something I've never heard of, so reading about it is fascinating: https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/ammonia-fuel-future/99/i8 https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/ammonia-fuel-fut...

leoedin 5y ago
It's actually a really interesting fuel (well, energy storage medium) with quite high compatibility with our current way of life. The best part is that you can synthesise it without carbon - which means the feedstocks are only really water, air and electricity. The downsides are toxicity (but this is probably manageable) and poor round trip efficiency. If we ever end up with excess energy (eg solar power in summer) then synthesising ammonia could be a good means of long term energy storage with very little capital investment required.
- audunw 5y ago
  I gotta imagine that the low efficiency can be managed by using batteries whenever possible. There’s already a hybrid ferry in Norway that uses batteries for the first and last part of the trip to avoid emissions near land. Would be perfect if it used ammonia for the middle part of the trip.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    There are lots more than that. See https://energiogklima.no/elektriske-bilferger-i-norge/ https://energiogklima.no/elektriske-bilferger-i-norge/ 42 fully or partially electric ferries now, 15 more by the end of the year.
dan-robertson 5y ago
Currently synthesising ammonia requires hydrogen and that comes from fossil fuels (the main process of extracting that hydrogen is steam reforming of natural gas and, I think, the main carbon emitter from the current ammonia process). Green ammonia would be made with green hydrogen which is made from water with electrolysis with renewable energy. These ideas make it more obvious that any viable solutions to climate change will require a massive increase in energy production. Solar and wind require massive scale and nuclear seems to currently be very hard to set up and unjustifiable if unit costs of electricity go down.

osense 5y ago

I'm surprised to see the service speed listed at 6 knots. Seems quite low for a container ship, no? From my limited anecdotal evidence of having cargo ships pass my sailboat, they're usually doing easily 10-15 knots. I wonder if that's related to battery efficiency being better at lower power consumption? In any case, for a short route mostly in shielded waters, as presented in the article, this doesn't seem like a hige downside. I also have to comment on the "emission-free" moniker. Was the construction of this ship emission-free? Definitely not. Is the maintenance of the ship going to be emission-free? Probably not. I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying to reduce our emissions, but seems like nowadays there's often an almost indistinguishable line between actually trying to produce a sustainable product, and just doing greenwashing to get more government grants and investors onboard.

Stevvo 5y ago
Slower speeds are much more efficient. In displacement vessels the energy required is proportional to the square root of the speed.
- osense 5y ago
  Is this independent of the hull shape and hydrodynamics? Or how does that influence the energy reuirements?
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    It all contributes, and depending on the sea state and heel angles also.

35_candelas 5y ago

In regards to the batteries, I haven't found information on what type of batteries the ship uses. However, new Sodium-ion batteries could be a good option for the ship's requirements. Sodium-ion is heavier than lithium counterparts but should be cheaper (uses sodium instead of lithium, cobalt, etc) and potentially offer greater charge, lifecycle, and safety performance. CATL Sodium-ion news article: https://www.catl.com/en/news/665.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/665.html