7 ms·

So if I understand correctly, methanol is a low emission fuel source because the CO2 is taken from the air or from plants that have captured it from the air? Bu

So if I understand correctly, methanol is a low emission fuel source because the CO2 is taken from the air or from plants that have captured it from the air? But if there isn’t enough supply of methanol now, won’t the gap just be filled by methanol from natural gas? And what incentive is there to change from natural gas to something more sustainable in the future? I’m skeptical that these methanol ships are an improvement.

analog31 3y ago
Right now ethanol is also sourced from methane unless heavily subsidized, so far as I know.
SoftTalker 3y ago
Well it's probably better than bunker oil or whatever petroleum fuel was used before. Battery electric may work at some smaller scales such as local ferries but not for moving 100,000 tons across oceans. The energy density just isn't there. Nuclear would be good but would make the ships a huge piracy/terrorism target. You'd need military escorts for them.
- lukan 3y ago
  "Battery electric may work at some smaller scales such as local ferries but not for moving 100,000 tons across oceans" It would definitely also work for 100 000 tons, but then a sizable percentage of those 100 000 tons will be battery and not freight. Unless the ship should make stops all the time to recharge, which is expensive as well, so no, batteries are not a economical solution for freight ships. But fuel cells might be a solution https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2021/march-2021/worlds-first-hightemperature-ammonia-powered-fuel-cell-for-shipping.html https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2021/march-...
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    Run them on beamed microwave power from space based solar panels
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      I've played SimCity 2000, no thank you.
      - lukan 3y ago
        I suppose it often caused disasters?
    - wafflemaker 3y ago
      For those who haven't read the very good hard sci-fi near future book Delta-V by Daniel Suarez: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40859000-delta-v https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40859000-delta-v Though we only encounter microwave beaming in the sequel, Critical Mass I found the book a very good read, super realistic. 10/10 for realism/science/research and 8/10 for story. It's very optimistic. Nice to read with the war in Ukraine and progressive climate change not filling with optimism.
      - lukan 3y ago
        Will give it a try, thanks! If you like other optimistic (mostly) hard sci fi, I recommend the mars trilogy from Kim Stanly Robinson, in case you missed that so far.
        wafflemaker 3y ago
        I'll do try, thanks! Think I've read the one in the middle, long time ago, when there were no online books and a good portion of my sci-fi reads were found in a supermarket in 3 big baskets showing up randomly from time to time. Filled with seemingly random sci-fi books. About 22 years ago in Poland.
  - throwaway5959 3y ago
    Why not put the batteries in cargo containers and load fully charged batteries when you arrive at a dock and unload the depleted ones. Surely there would be a way to connect them together that could even happen automatically once the batteries are in place right?
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The amount of batteries you need to generate the forces involved is astronomical. A Panamax ship can consume 63,000 gallons a day. To do that with batteries, you'd basically need a whole ship of batteries.
      - gergi137 3y ago
        Back of the napkin math, 63,000 gallons of gasoline per day. 33kWh of energy in each gallon of gasoline. Internal combustion approximately 33% efficient at turning that energy into propulsion while batteries and electric motors are ~90% efficient. A Tesla megapack stores 3,854 kWh and weighs 84,000 lbs. 63000*33*.33/(3854*0.9)*84000 = 16,782,563 lbs or ~7,600 metric tons worth of batteries for 1 day's worth of "electric fuel"
        throwaway5959 3y ago
        ok so it’s sounding like only nuclear could provide a sustained electrical supply, but that has obvious hijacking concerns. Gah. Thanks!
        lukan 3y ago
        You do not like fuel cells? Ammonia/methan/pure hydrogen do not have the fuel density like diesel, but it is still very managable. Possibly even better all in all im terms of weight, as you need less fuel.
        Beldin 3y ago
        For comparison: apparently, "fuel" weighs about 3.7854 kg per gallon, so 63,000 gallons weigh about 238.5 tons.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Nuclear would be perfect for large scale shipping operations, but it's tightly controlled for the reason you mentioned but also for what if there's a meltdown? A sci-fi future would have small(ish) and safe fusion reactors propelling massive container ships on hydrofoils going wheeeee.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civilian_nuclear_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... It has been attempted and found wanting, but it is certainly possible. You'd probably not want to just replace the engines in current ships, and instead require that they be maintained and crewed by responsible countries.
- AYBABTME 3y ago
  Local ferries are speed sensitive, and unless ultra light and with hydrofoils, drag from speed will kill the feasibility of battery electric high speed ferrying. If done anyways, you'd need almost MW scale charging infrastructure to make rapid round trips. Ferries often don't even tie to the dock, they just continuously push against the dock while passengers unload and reload, and turn around to resume travel.
  - toast0 3y ago
    > Local ferries are speed sensitive, and unless ultra light and with hydrofoils, How fast do you need to go to hydrofoil when you're carrying 200 cars? They're working on a battery elecrtric version of my local ferry, and yeah, it's gonna be a lot of charging infra; but in theory the operating costs are much lower, and the charging plans mean they increased grid redundancy for me, so that's nice. This is my current ferry: https://wsdot.com/ferries/vesselwatch/VesselDetail.aspx?vessel_id=32 https://wsdot.com/ferries/vesselwatch/VesselDetail.aspx?vess...
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  > Nuclear would be good but would make the ships a huge piracy/terrorism target. You'd need military escorts for them. Dunno if this is actually true. There's plenty of stuff going around every day in unguarded ships that have significantly more accessible terror-potential than anything you can put together with a small nuclear reactor. If recent events in the Panama Canal or Baltimore isn't convincing enough of the disruption a single misplaced cargo ship can cause, it's hard to argue against Tianjin[1] and Beirut[2]. Like those disasters, mind bogglingly destructive as they were, were caused by incompetence and negligence. It's hard to imagine what someone with malicious intent could cook up with nearly 3000 tons of ammonium nitrate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
vegetablepotpie 3y ago
You can take CO2 from industrial processes that emit it as a byproduct. Carbon fee and dividend would incentivize low carbon fuels by putting a price on carbon. The methanol purchased would not incur a fee. Carbon fee and dividend is employed in Canada and bills have been introduced to the US congress many times since 2009. Shipping companies have an incentive to begin employing low carbon fuels to get ahead of policy changes.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Hmm - why isn't this happening more often? IIUC, you can produce 1 tonne of Methanol for $100-250 from CO2: https://decarbonisationtechnology.com/article/162/conversion-of-co2-to-methanol https://decarbonisationtechnology.com/article/162/conversion... (presumably the cost should be less for waste, since waste is "free"). That would be ~250k BTU per dollar and gasoline is about ~50k BTU per dollar IIUC. OTOH, natural gas is close to 1M BTU per dollar.
icegreentea2 3y ago
The current methanol source is almost certainly natural gas. There is quite a lot of work in trying to get bio-methanol and other truly low/negative GHG sources online (along with biodiesel, bio-heavy fuels, etc etc). If you're asking for incentives - if the actual cost of materials does not become directly advantageous, then presumably we'll get plain old fashion regulation forcing the issue. In any case, actually having these ships out there in operational service gives additional incentives to whoever is working on bio-methanol to like... actually get going. Edit: Sneaking in an aside. If you were wondering about the naming, and maybe you were ignorant like me. Maersk is majority owned by A.P. Moller Holding. A.P. Moller is one of Maersk's founders.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "Today we use biofuel from waste streams that are unfit to use for human or animal consumption." https://www.maersk.com/support/faqs/low-carbon-fuels-used-by-maersk-eco-delivery https://www.maersk.com/support/faqs/low-carbon-fuels-used-by...
  - plorg 3y ago
    That sounds more like biodigesters or landfill gas than the "hydrogen from renewable sources plus CO2 from the combustion of plant sources" described in a cousin comment.
    - lazide 3y ago
      It can also be exhaust from biofueled turbine power plants, which apparently are a thing in Northern Europe. Typically fed from timber harvest slash, brush, etc. [https://smartcitysweden.com/best-practice/399/swedens-largest-biofuel-heat-and-power-plant/ https://smartcitysweden.com/best-practice/399/swedens-larges...]
      - amenhotep 3y ago
        Chips from logging Canadian old growth forests, if you're Drax.
fulafel 3y ago
The incentive (and driver for more co2 neutral methane production) might be the CO2 pricing on the seas coming up: https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/worlds-first-global-co2-charge-inches-closer-at-london-meetings/108776965 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas... But yes, the methanol fuel capability is a necessary-but-not-sufficient precondition for low co2 emissions shipping.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  > the methanol fuel capability is a necessary-but-not-sufficient precondition for low co2 emissions shipping. Would I be (very approximately) correct in thinking of it like the transition to Electric Vehicles, where it is not sufficient in that we then also need to ensure the electricity is generated in a low CO2 emissions manner? But the transition to EVs is a necessary step, because it enables that transition to be possible?
crote 3y ago
Yes, but until we invent and scale up a suitable truly CO2-neutral alternative, it's at least a lot better than bunker fuel!
ogrisel 3y ago
Here is another reference that described how Maersk define and source green methanol: https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/06/13/maersk-secures-green-methanol https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/06/13/maersk-secur... The cleanest process combines hydrogen produced from renewable electricity (typically wind or solar) and CO2 captured from the combustion of biomass.
nottorp 3y ago
Well, it's like electric cars. You can charge the battery from solar power or burning coal. But if you shut down the coal plants and go all solar, you don't need to change anything about the existing cars.
photochemsyn 3y ago
The replacement of high-sulfur bunker-oil fuel (literally the bottom of the barrel in terms of petroleum refining) with methanol is an undeniable win on multiple grounds, such as high air pollution in port cities and along shipping lanes. Methanol is simply a much cleaner-burning fuel, regardless of source. As far as synthetic hydrocarbon production goes, methanol is low-hanging fruit. E.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2018.00446/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2018.0044... > "Starting from pure CO2 and a separate pure source of H2, rather than a mixture of CO, CO2, and H2 as is the case with syngas, simplifies the chemistry, and therefore also changes the reaction and purification processes from conventional methanol producing industrial plants. At the core of the advantages is that the reaction impurities are essentially limited to only water and dissolved CO2 in the crude methanol."
mistrial9 3y ago
Oil industry chemists have decided somehow that methanol from LNG is the next step to delivering their own production materials. Related to this are long-range plans to build the infrastructure of ports, manufacturing and processing facilities to implement it. IMHO they do not intend to ask anyone for permission, they will simply do this with military, and let the politicians deal with fallout.
rzwitserloot 3y ago
Not the CO2 - the C. Technically you don't need the Cs at all, you can just burn H2. However, H2 has all sorts of annoyances; running a car on H2 is difficult. Running a boat on it, not really feasible right now. Your worry about the 'gap' is sensible but (probably) not relevant here. You're asking to do the job of 'produce energy in a sustainable way' and the job of 'use said sustainably produced energy efficiently' in tandem, never raising one without also raising the other on the same day. Not. Possible. This market is already far too complicated. So, instead, you work on one of the 2 edges and trust that the market will fix the other edge. If not immediately, then at least create a stable incentive. For example, right now, solar and wind is generally considered 'cheapest', but that glosses over an important detail: When the sun is out and it's windy, power prices are often __negative__ for it. So cheap, it's negative. That's because so much solar and wind is produced, the demand side hasn't caught up. Power MUST be used IMMEDIATELY, you can't just 'let it go round and round on the power cables', they'd just asplode. If there's a sudden unplanned influx of power then that's bad and thus you get money _back_ if you take more power off the grid in that time. And, the flipside: ON a misty day (no wind, no sun), power is very expensive. Because supply is lower than expected. (Prices go negative because not all solar/wind systems are smart gridded up; if they were, they'd just turn themselves off and stop producing. Which merely reduces the price to 0 instead of negative). Hence, one of the big missing links in this future renewable energy world we're trying to make happen, is an energy _demand_ that can react perfectly to the inherently fluctuating nature of energy _supply_ where the supply is based on solar/wind. One solution is to add a really stable or flexible source on the supply side. This is partly why richer countries still are building gas-based fossil fuel powerplants: Gas plants are easily 'tunable' - you can pretty much just rotate a volume knob and the power output responds pretty quickly. Coal is harder to 'tune', and nuclear is MUCH harder to tune (twiddle the knob now, it has an effect hours from now). Regardless of the tuning, a fossil fuel powerplant, even one that is usually running at nearly zero flow, is something we'd prefer to avoid. So, a better solution is to instead have flexible demand that can respond to fluctuating supply. But that's really hard to do! The solution so far is to let the grid mediate: Folks producing power just shove it on the grid, prices respond to supply, and the hope is that the cheap (or even negative!) arbitrary price drops incentivize the market to come up with ways to use the free power when its there. This is sort of working but the biggest issue is the grid part. It's actually really pricey to build a grid that can deal with massive spikes, and the exact places where you want to build wind and solar (far away where there's plenty of space) is where there is no grid. Because nobody lives there. Methanol offers an enticing way out. Instead of building, say, a wind farm in an urban area (complicated), or a wind farm where there's plenty of space (but no grid connection that can deal with it), you build a wind farm out of the way and hook it up to a methanol factory. You just store the methanol (it's easy to store - liquid and not all that poisonous or volatile), you can even pump it, you can ship it. The amount of research and money flowing into this model of 'make fluctuating renewable energy sources and hook em up to methanol producing things built right next to them' is limited because the demand for it isn't all that high. But it's not all that technically challenging (within reason. My point is, this is WAAY easier than nuclear fusion, for example) - so, create stable demand for it and it's highly likely the market will provide. Hence, it's oversimplified but in broad strokes fair to call methanol 'low emission' even if methanol supply today isn't great.
credit_guy 3y ago
> I’m skeptical that these methanol ships are an improvement. And you should be. The damning fact about methanol is that it has a very low energy density. Per wikipedia [1], one kilogram of diesel has an energy content of 45.6 MJ (megajoules). One kg of methanol has only 19.7 MJ. So, joule for joule, you need 2.3 tons of methanol for each ton of diesel you replace. My guess is that these ships will forever remain "methanol capable", but will continue to run on regular diesel fuel. It's probably some scheme to get some green credits, just like the "flex fuel" cars in the US, which can run on ethanol, but most often don't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  My impression is energy density matters significantly less with these giant ships.
  - credit_guy 3y ago
    I ran some numbers. This ship can carry 7226 TEU containers; it has a gross tonnage of about 100k tons (93.5k to be precise) [1]. I found that a 5000 TEU carrier has a fuel capacity of 2 million gallons [2]. Since Anna Maersk can carry almost 50% more, its fuel capacity should be larger, but probably by less than 50% because of economies of scale. In any case, replacing diesel with methanol would require at least an additional 3 million gallons, which comes to 10000 tons. That's 10% of the gross tonnage of the ship. I suspect that no ship builder or operator will consider this a negligible amount. [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83601270 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83601270 [2] https://www.aol.com/many-gallons-fuel-does-container-142703880.html https://www.aol.com/many-gallons-fuel-does-container-1427038...

analog31 3y ago

Right now ethanol is also sourced from methane unless heavily subsidized, so far as I know.

SoftTalker 3y ago

Well it's probably better than bunker oil or whatever petroleum fuel was used before. Battery electric may work at some smaller scales such as local ferries but not for moving 100,000 tons across oceans. The energy density just isn't there. Nuclear would be good but would make the ships a huge piracy/terrorism target. You'd need military escorts for them.

lukan 3y ago
"Battery electric may work at some smaller scales such as local ferries but not for moving 100,000 tons across oceans" It would definitely also work for 100 000 tons, but then a sizable percentage of those 100 000 tons will be battery and not freight. Unless the ship should make stops all the time to recharge, which is expensive as well, so no, batteries are not a economical solution for freight ships. But fuel cells might be a solution https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2021/march-2021/worlds-first-hightemperature-ammonia-powered-fuel-cell-for-shipping.html https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2021/march-...
- dv_dt 3y ago
  Run them on beamed microwave power from space based solar panels
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    I've played SimCity 2000, no thank you.
    - lukan 3y ago
      I suppose it often caused disasters?
  - wafflemaker 3y ago
    For those who haven't read the very good hard sci-fi near future book Delta-V by Daniel Suarez: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40859000-delta-v https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40859000-delta-v Though we only encounter microwave beaming in the sequel, Critical Mass I found the book a very good read, super realistic. 10/10 for realism/science/research and 8/10 for story. It's very optimistic. Nice to read with the war in Ukraine and progressive climate change not filling with optimism.
    - lukan 3y ago
      Will give it a try, thanks! If you like other optimistic (mostly) hard sci fi, I recommend the mars trilogy from Kim Stanly Robinson, in case you missed that so far.
      - wafflemaker 3y ago
        I'll do try, thanks! Think I've read the one in the middle, long time ago, when there were no online books and a good portion of my sci-fi reads were found in a supermarket in 3 big baskets showing up randomly from time to time. Filled with seemingly random sci-fi books. About 22 years ago in Poland.
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  Why not put the batteries in cargo containers and load fully charged batteries when you arrive at a dock and unload the depleted ones. Surely there would be a way to connect them together that could even happen automatically once the batteries are in place right?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The amount of batteries you need to generate the forces involved is astronomical. A Panamax ship can consume 63,000 gallons a day. To do that with batteries, you'd basically need a whole ship of batteries.
    - gergi137 3y ago
      Back of the napkin math, 63,000 gallons of gasoline per day. 33kWh of energy in each gallon of gasoline. Internal combustion approximately 33% efficient at turning that energy into propulsion while batteries and electric motors are ~90% efficient. A Tesla megapack stores 3,854 kWh and weighs 84,000 lbs. 63000*33*.33/(3854*0.9)*84000 = 16,782,563 lbs or ~7,600 metric tons worth of batteries for 1 day's worth of "electric fuel"
      - throwaway5959 3y ago
        ok so it’s sounding like only nuclear could provide a sustained electrical supply, but that has obvious hijacking concerns. Gah. Thanks!
        lukan 3y ago
        You do not like fuel cells? Ammonia/methan/pure hydrogen do not have the fuel density like diesel, but it is still very managable. Possibly even better all in all im terms of weight, as you need less fuel.
      - Beldin 3y ago
        For comparison: apparently, "fuel" weighs about 3.7854 kg per gallon, so 63,000 gallons weigh about 238.5 tons.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Nuclear would be perfect for large scale shipping operations, but it's tightly controlled for the reason you mentioned but also for what if there's a meltdown? A sci-fi future would have small(ish) and safe fusion reactors propelling massive container ships on hydrofoils going wheeeee.
- bombcar 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civilian_nuclear_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... It has been attempted and found wanting, but it is certainly possible. You'd probably not want to just replace the engines in current ships, and instead require that they be maintained and crewed by responsible countries.
AYBABTME 3y ago
Local ferries are speed sensitive, and unless ultra light and with hydrofoils, drag from speed will kill the feasibility of battery electric high speed ferrying. If done anyways, you'd need almost MW scale charging infrastructure to make rapid round trips. Ferries often don't even tie to the dock, they just continuously push against the dock while passengers unload and reload, and turn around to resume travel.
- toast0 3y ago
  > Local ferries are speed sensitive, and unless ultra light and with hydrofoils, How fast do you need to go to hydrofoil when you're carrying 200 cars? They're working on a battery elecrtric version of my local ferry, and yeah, it's gonna be a lot of charging infra; but in theory the operating costs are much lower, and the charging plans mean they increased grid redundancy for me, so that's nice. This is my current ferry: https://wsdot.com/ferries/vesselwatch/VesselDetail.aspx?vessel_id=32 https://wsdot.com/ferries/vesselwatch/VesselDetail.aspx?vess...
marginalia_nu 3y ago
> Nuclear would be good but would make the ships a huge piracy/terrorism target. You'd need military escorts for them. Dunno if this is actually true. There's plenty of stuff going around every day in unguarded ships that have significantly more accessible terror-potential than anything you can put together with a small nuclear reactor. If recent events in the Panama Canal or Baltimore isn't convincing enough of the disruption a single misplaced cargo ship can cause, it's hard to argue against Tianjin[1] and Beirut[2]. Like those disasters, mind bogglingly destructive as they were, were caused by incompetence and negligence. It's hard to imagine what someone with malicious intent could cook up with nearly 3000 tons of ammonium nitrate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion

vegetablepotpie 3y ago

You can take CO2 from industrial processes that emit it as a byproduct. Carbon fee and dividend would incentivize low carbon fuels by putting a price on carbon. The methanol purchased would not incur a fee. Carbon fee and dividend is employed in Canada and bills have been introduced to the US congress many times since 2009. Shipping companies have an incentive to begin employing low carbon fuels to get ahead of policy changes.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Hmm - why isn't this happening more often? IIUC, you can produce 1 tonne of Methanol for $100-250 from CO2: https://decarbonisationtechnology.com/article/162/conversion-of-co2-to-methanol https://decarbonisationtechnology.com/article/162/conversion... (presumably the cost should be less for waste, since waste is "free"). That would be ~250k BTU per dollar and gasoline is about ~50k BTU per dollar IIUC. OTOH, natural gas is close to 1M BTU per dollar.

icegreentea2 3y ago

The current methanol source is almost certainly natural gas. There is quite a lot of work in trying to get bio-methanol and other truly low/negative GHG sources online (along with biodiesel, bio-heavy fuels, etc etc). If you're asking for incentives - if the actual cost of materials does not become directly advantageous, then presumably we'll get plain old fashion regulation forcing the issue. In any case, actually having these ships out there in operational service gives additional incentives to whoever is working on bio-methanol to like... actually get going. Edit: Sneaking in an aside. If you were wondering about the naming, and maybe you were ignorant like me. Maersk is majority owned by A.P. Moller Holding. A.P. Moller is one of Maersk's founders.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
"Today we use biofuel from waste streams that are unfit to use for human or animal consumption." https://www.maersk.com/support/faqs/low-carbon-fuels-used-by-maersk-eco-delivery https://www.maersk.com/support/faqs/low-carbon-fuels-used-by...
- plorg 3y ago
  That sounds more like biodigesters or landfill gas than the "hydrogen from renewable sources plus CO2 from the combustion of plant sources" described in a cousin comment.
  - lazide 3y ago
    It can also be exhaust from biofueled turbine power plants, which apparently are a thing in Northern Europe. Typically fed from timber harvest slash, brush, etc. [https://smartcitysweden.com/best-practice/399/swedens-largest-biofuel-heat-and-power-plant/ https://smartcitysweden.com/best-practice/399/swedens-larges...]
    - amenhotep 3y ago
      Chips from logging Canadian old growth forests, if you're Drax.

fulafel 3y ago

The incentive (and driver for more co2 neutral methane production) might be the CO2 pricing on the seas coming up: https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/worlds-first-global-co2-charge-inches-closer-at-london-meetings/108776965 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas... But yes, the methanol fuel capability is a necessary-but-not-sufficient precondition for low co2 emissions shipping.

ncallaway 3y ago
> the methanol fuel capability is a necessary-but-not-sufficient precondition for low co2 emissions shipping. Would I be (very approximately) correct in thinking of it like the transition to Electric Vehicles, where it is not sufficient in that we then also need to ensure the electricity is generated in a low CO2 emissions manner? But the transition to EVs is a necessary step, because it enables that transition to be possible?

crote 3y ago

Yes, but until we invent and scale up a suitable truly CO2-neutral alternative, it's at least a lot better than bunker fuel!

ogrisel 3y ago

Here is another reference that described how Maersk define and source green methanol: https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/06/13/maersk-secures-green-methanol https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/06/13/maersk-secur... The cleanest process combines hydrogen produced from renewable electricity (typically wind or solar) and CO2 captured from the combustion of biomass.

nottorp 3y ago

Well, it's like electric cars. You can charge the battery from solar power or burning coal. But if you shut down the coal plants and go all solar, you don't need to change anything about the existing cars.

photochemsyn 3y ago

The replacement of high-sulfur bunker-oil fuel (literally the bottom of the barrel in terms of petroleum refining) with methanol is an undeniable win on multiple grounds, such as high air pollution in port cities and along shipping lanes. Methanol is simply a much cleaner-burning fuel, regardless of source. As far as synthetic hydrocarbon production goes, methanol is low-hanging fruit. E.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2018.00446/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2018.0044... > "Starting from pure CO2 and a separate pure source of H2, rather than a mixture of CO, CO2, and H2 as is the case with syngas, simplifies the chemistry, and therefore also changes the reaction and purification processes from conventional methanol producing industrial plants. At the core of the advantages is that the reaction impurities are essentially limited to only water and dissolved CO2 in the crude methanol."

mistrial9 3y ago

Oil industry chemists have decided somehow that methanol from LNG is the next step to delivering their own production materials. Related to this are long-range plans to build the infrastructure of ports, manufacturing and processing facilities to implement it. IMHO they do not intend to ask anyone for permission, they will simply do this with military, and let the politicians deal with fallout.

rzwitserloot 3y ago

Not the CO2 - the C. Technically you don't need the Cs at all, you can just burn H2. However, H2 has all sorts of annoyances; running a car on H2 is difficult. Running a boat on it, not really feasible right now. Your worry about the 'gap' is sensible but (probably) not relevant here. You're asking to do the job of 'produce energy in a sustainable way' and the job of 'use said sustainably produced energy efficiently' in tandem, never raising one without also raising the other on the same day. Not. Possible. This market is already far too complicated. So, instead, you work on one of the 2 edges and trust that the market will fix the other edge. If not immediately, then at least create a stable incentive. For example, right now, solar and wind is generally considered 'cheapest', but that glosses over an important detail: When the sun is out and it's windy, power prices are often __negative__ for it. So cheap, it's negative. That's because so much solar and wind is produced, the demand side hasn't caught up. Power MUST be used IMMEDIATELY, you can't just 'let it go round and round on the power cables', they'd just asplode. If there's a sudden unplanned influx of power then that's bad and thus you get money _back_ if you take more power off the grid in that time. And, the flipside: ON a misty day (no wind, no sun), power is very expensive. Because supply is lower than expected. (Prices go negative because not all solar/wind systems are smart gridded up; if they were, they'd just turn themselves off and stop producing. Which merely reduces the price to 0 instead of negative). Hence, one of the big missing links in this future renewable energy world we're trying to make happen, is an energy _demand_ that can react perfectly to the inherently fluctuating nature of energy _supply_ where the supply is based on solar/wind. One solution is to add a really stable or flexible source on the supply side. This is partly why richer countries still are building gas-based fossil fuel powerplants: Gas plants are easily 'tunable' - you can pretty much just rotate a volume knob and the power output responds pretty quickly. Coal is harder to 'tune', and nuclear is MUCH harder to tune (twiddle the knob now, it has an effect hours from now). Regardless of the tuning, a fossil fuel powerplant, even one that is usually running at nearly zero flow, is something we'd prefer to avoid. So, a better solution is to instead have flexible demand that can respond to fluctuating supply. But that's really hard to do! The solution so far is to let the grid mediate: Folks producing power just shove it on the grid, prices respond to supply, and the hope is that the cheap (or even negative!) arbitrary price drops incentivize the market to come up with ways to use the free power when its there. This is sort of working but the biggest issue is the grid part. It's actually really pricey to build a grid that can deal with massive spikes, and the exact places where you want to build wind and solar (far away where there's plenty of space) is where there is no grid. Because nobody lives there. Methanol offers an enticing way out. Instead of building, say, a wind farm in an urban area (complicated), or a wind farm where there's plenty of space (but no grid connection that can deal with it), you build a wind farm out of the way and hook it up to a methanol factory. You just store the methanol (it's easy to store - liquid and not all that poisonous or volatile), you can even pump it, you can ship it. The amount of research and money flowing into this model of 'make fluctuating renewable energy sources and hook em up to methanol producing things built right next to them' is limited because the demand for it isn't all that high. But it's not all that technically challenging (within reason. My point is, this is WAAY easier than nuclear fusion, for example) - so, create stable demand for it and it's highly likely the market will provide. Hence, it's oversimplified but in broad strokes fair to call methanol 'low emission' even if methanol supply today isn't great.

credit_guy 3y ago

> I’m skeptical that these methanol ships are an improvement. And you should be. The damning fact about methanol is that it has a very low energy density. Per wikipedia [1], one kilogram of diesel has an energy content of 45.6 MJ (megajoules). One kg of methanol has only 19.7 MJ. So, joule for joule, you need 2.3 tons of methanol for each ton of diesel you replace. My guess is that these ships will forever remain "methanol capable", but will continue to run on regular diesel fuel. It's probably some scheme to get some green credits, just like the "flex fuel" cars in the US, which can run on ethanol, but most often don't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

SkyPuncher 3y ago
My impression is energy density matters significantly less with these giant ships.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  I ran some numbers. This ship can carry 7226 TEU containers; it has a gross tonnage of about 100k tons (93.5k to be precise) [1]. I found that a 5000 TEU carrier has a fuel capacity of 2 million gallons [2]. Since Anna Maersk can carry almost 50% more, its fuel capacity should be larger, but probably by less than 50% because of economies of scale. In any case, replacing diesel with methanol would require at least an additional 3 million gallons, which comes to 10000 tons. That's 10% of the gross tonnage of the ship. I suspect that no ship builder or operator will consider this a negligible amount. [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83601270 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q83601270 [2] https://www.aol.com/many-gallons-fuel-does-container-142703880.html https://www.aol.com/many-gallons-fuel-does-container-1427038...