Zero-emission autonomous ship planned to start in 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Zero-emission autonomous ship planned to start in 2018

yara.com

76 pointsantr39 comments

Why not build a modern sail powered cargo vessel? A quick back of the napkin calculation puts this ship in the cargo range of a late 19th century clipper. These ships were as fast as modern diesel cargo ships, had relatively small crews (20-25), and were of course zero-emission. For a short coastal route such as this an even smaller crew could be used since you could dispense with a regular watch standing schedule.

It wouldn't be autonomous, but it would be way cooler.

Lack of predictability.

I attended a maritime academy and worked in the industry for a year before switching to computers.

The modern transportation is built on reliable ETAs. Mechanical propulsion changed shipping from an industry of uncertainty to one in which you 'could make your own ETA'. Sail doesn't give you that kind of certainty.

It is worth noting that there are technologies (SkySail, for example) on the market now that use sail as a form of auxiliary power so that ships can save on bunkers.

(edit: formatting)

Is there any kind of cargo with logistics of "eh, as long as it gets there eventually"?

A curious thought just popped into my head. Deliveries tend to be time critical. I can't think of many deliveries that would tend not to be. However ocean cleanup struck me as a type of 'collection' that may hypothetically find sail power to be an advantage. I've done zero research and have absolutely no background in the area, however I do recall from my years fishing that at least surface garbage tends to follow wind patterns. If this can be exploited by an autonomous vehicle in some way, perhaps it could prove to be an advantage? Clusters of networked vessels could work together to provide enough live data on wind direction to avoid errors with localised high frequency changes in wind direction perhaps.

The down sides would be that once the vessel has a full cargo, it may take longer than a powered vessel to return to wherever it will offload the waste (perhaps a larger 'mothership' could follow?), and with no sailing expertise, I suspect that it may be harder to direct such a vessel than just using a powered one with the appropriate sensors aboard.

For non-perishable goods, you can compensate for this by keeping larger stockpiles at the destination to prohibit shortfalls. However, this obviously costs more in terms of warehousing, risk, and sunk capital.

By the way if you want to know what it was like at (almost) the very last moments of sail freight I very highly recommend "The Last Great Grain Race" in which Eric Newby writes of his experience working aboard a wind powered grain freighter from Europe to Australia in 1939. Sail shipping was suspended during the war and finally ended for good in 1949.

(In typical Newby style he had zero sailing experience when he signed on, though he was an excellent writer).

>> "It wouldn't be autonomous..."

There are plenty of autonomous sailboats, such as https://ubcsailbot.org/, http://saildrone.com/ etc.

These tend to be small because they're not often run for commercial purposes, but you could surely build one bigger.

There's a proposal (not proven economically sound AFAIK) to develop an airfoil-assisted cargo vessel powered by LNG: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/16/tech/vindskip-wind-powered-con...

I remember seeing this kite-like concept in a magazine a long time ago: http://www.skysails.info/english/

Crew is expensive today, especially when compared to the 19th century when conditions were horrid and you could impress people into your crew.

> compared to the 19th century when conditions were horrid and you could impress people into your crew

Impressment was not used for merchant shipping.

Ya wanna bet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

Why not an autonomous sailboat?

Sailboats devote a lot of structure and surface area to propulsion. All that stuff gets in the way of loading and unloading containers.

Also, they're slow.

An electric boat is probably slow also.

Anybody have range numbers on this? I doubt they're going to get very far with just batteries right now but this could be an interesting solution for ferry-type operation between local ports.

This article gives a little bit more detail: http://newatlas.com/autonomous-electric-shipping-container-v...

The article says they're using this to replace an overland truck route between Porsgrunn and Larvik, Norway - roughly 25km. I'd guess the shipping route is double that?

That's an awfully short route to use a ship on. I could see this being very useful for stuff like vehicle and passenger ferry transport but cargo containers seems downright ridiculous.

Their previous process was load container on truck, drive to major port, unload container from truck, load container onto a ship. The plant apparently is a small port, so the new process is load container on ship, sail ship to major port, unload container from ship, load container onto another ship. I don't see why loading and unloading a ship would be more onerous than loading and unloading a bunch of trucks. So if the ship uses less fuel than a bunch of trucks, it's a win. Why not do it?

Siemens [1] recently put an all electric propulsion, battery powered ferry into operation on the Lavik-Oppedal route in Norway. So not exactly long haul, but a good demonstration on the feasibility of the technology.

Hurtigruten [2] has ordered new hybrid ships that will be able to run all electric for shorter periods of time in normal cruise speeds, while operating for much longer times in fjords on slower speeds.

[1] https://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pre...

[2] https://www.hurtigruten.com/about-us/news/new-hybrid-explore...

The closest one Brevik is about 11km by car so maybe 15km by sea and Larvik is 29km by car but around a jut of land so closer to 50-75km by sea. So over all fairly close together.

No pics of a finished ship? Or even a partially completed one? Is is just vaporware at this point?

According to this article (norwegian): https://www.tu.no/artikler/verdens-forste-autonome-skip-i-dr... a contract should be signed this year. Delivery Q3 2018 and testing with onboard crew. Remote control from Brevik (port authority) in 2019 and fully autonomous operations from 2020. So yes, vaporware at this point, but with Kongsberg as a partner I think this will be built - for more see: https://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0240.nsf/AllWeb/597...

Fertilizer companies have a unique incentive to fight greenhouse gas emissions. Plants grow better at higher C02 concentrations thus reducing the need for their product.

Except fine particulates negatively affect plant growth. Systems are complex and CO2 at levels that will greatly improve plant growth will probably kill most animal life (also mass oxygenation of the atmosphere has happened before and that was really bad for the planet too).

"With this vessel, Yara will reduce diesel-powered truck haulage by 40,000 journeys a year."

That's a lot of jobs. No news to HN readers, but figuring out how to handle surplus labor without (often violent) societal upheaval will be the defining issue of this century.

> figuring out how to handle surplus labor without (often violent) societal upheaval will be the defining issue of this century

The jobs and the welfare of individuals are the top priorities IMHO, but I'm not sure there is a great problem. This isn't at all a new situation.

If you look at the jobs of a century ago in advanced economies, most of them are gone yet employment now is relatively high. Just think of the homemakers who were displaced by the automation of home care (clothes washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, etc.); that might approach half the population. There's also textiles, mining, factory work, etc. It's a regular process: Productivity improves, less labor is needed in one area, and so it shifts to something more productive. If it wasn't for that creative destruction, there would be no software developers; they'd all be in the mines and fields.

What is different this time? I've heard all sorts of speculation, but I haven't heard anyone with expertise seriously analyze and address it.

There are problems: To me the essential issue is that while the economy in aggregate grows through this process, individuals don't live in aggregate; they suffer (and sometimes gain) tremendously. The economy may grow 4% in aggregate, but most people don't get 4% richer; some lose 100% of a job (and house and children's education, and even healthcare in the U.S.) or gain 100% of a job. Perhaps that is no longer acceptable to us; it's not to me. The factory may move to a different part of the country, and in aggregate the economy marginally grows (there are the same number of factories in the country and we can assume it was moved to increase productivity), but all those individuals lost jobs.

In addition, some research shows that a large segment of the population hasn't been getting wealthier for decades; only a few are. For example,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/08/resea...

The problem is that we keep raising the floor on the level of training and aptitude that's required to be a productive worker in society, and we're already getting to the point where a lot of people can't keep up. The shift from being behind the plow to a cog in an assembly line doesn't filter that many people out. The shift from blue-collar industrial to white collar bullshit clerical employment filters a little more, but the shift to skilled knowledge work, which is rapidly becoming the only path to economic security, filters people hard. There's a lot of people that don't have the tools to even compete, and more that have the ability but don't have the resources to retread.

That's a good, understandable explanation. Thanks.

Another useful explanation is that new jobs are being created all the time, but most of the new ones can be done better by machines.

That is an interesting hypothesis that I've thought about. It seems plausible (but what do I know) - do you know of any research that supports it?

An honest question; you are not obligated to do my research but maybe you know.

Obligatory related post of "Human need not apply"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

The trucking industry has a very high turnover rate so by the time this is in place it wont displace those that have jobs it will simply eliminate the need to do replacement hires.

And they don't all live in a town together, like workers in a coal mine or large factory, so it won't blight an entire region as the main work provider closes, and then all the secondary sources of work and income close as a result, leading to a spiral of misery. Instead the pain will be spread across the country as so be easier to absorb and rebound.

This is cool, but you can already have zero (net) emissions by running an existing container ship off of biodiesel or synthetic diesel. And the crews are so small relative to freight volumes that automating them won't drop costs very much.

Biofuel is not zero emissions, currently it is even worse because huge parts of rainforrest are burned for this monoculture farming.

Citation? Most of the firms trying to make this work are growing algae in the desert (or the navy is just synthesizing jet fuel from sea water) -- and if companies are willing to pay for a literal boat load of Li-ion batteries, their cost/gallon is probably competitive.

>Most of the firms trying to make this work are growing algae in the desert

They aren't currently producing biofuels. Current biofuels are primarily rapeseed, corn, and sugar cane based.

It's not that they don't exist, it's that current generation tech is not economical without subsidies [that don't exist], and therefore hasn't been scaled up.

And there is no way in hell that a boat filled with batteries is economical compared to one filled with bunker fuel. So if we're not doing economical, it's worth exploring other not-quite-there renewable sources -- especially since a net-zero-CO2 fuel will be more practical: big tanks are cheap, more batteries are not.

They don't seem to talk about energy source. Is this going to be battery powered or nuclear powered?

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