What are other options for ships if fossil fuels were phased out?
Big batteries? https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-e...
Hydrogen fuel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_ship
Yeah, those options seem simpler.
Big batteries? https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-e...
Hydrogen fuel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_ship
Yeah, those options seem simpler.
Second, CO2 is at very low concentrations in the atmosphere. Direct atmospheric carbon sequestration is expensive and slow. The biggest startup in the synthetic fuel business is behind schedule and is struggling to solve these two main challenges [2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
2. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/25/1050899/promethe...
> As of 2021, green hydrogen accounted for less than 0.04% of total hydrogen production. Its cost relative to hydrogen derived from fossil fuels is the main reason green hydrogen is in less demand. For example, hydrogen produced by electrolysis powered by solar power was about 25 times more expensive than that derived from hydrocarbons in 2018.
You know, like Musk did with EVs and charging networks.
By comparison, the economics nuclear powered ships are not that much worse than conventional propulsion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah#Economics_of_nucle...
But honestly, I reached the point where I claim the same "just build it" approach the pro-nuclear crowd is using regardless of data and facta. Especially since I know from a project I was involved in before COVID hit, that green hydrogen produced PV is absolutely feasible and commercially viable. To do so at tue scale needed requires political action and subsidies, and the tech has still a lot of room for improvement. I say this is good news.
It'd be really great to link to that project and actually demonstrate this claim of commercial viability. We have at least one demonstration of a nuclear powered merchant ship operating over the span of a decade. Can we say the same for a green-fuel powered vessel?
https://www.ship-technology.com/projects/viking-energy-cargo...
The same vessel will be launched early next year with an ammonia fuel cell.
LNG can be produced using green energy, the actual engine doesn't care how the fuel was produced.
Regarding the green hydrogen project: it was a proposed pilot production site to produce green hydrogen. And the business case was actually positive. No idea where that project is now, tuey needed EU funding and that was hard to come by during Covid. And after, I stopped being a freelance consultant.
Synthetic natural gas has all the same problems as green hydrogen, with the added challenge of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. It's only been cheaply produced using byproduct CO2 from industrial processes. Which isn't actually carbon-neutral, it's just using CO2 that would have been released into the atmosphere anyway.
https://www.valves-community.com/en/cryogenic-air-gases/synt...
But honestly, why am I doing your internet searches for you? And why don't you know any of this already?
But unfortunately this method does not scale. The amount of fuel produced would be limited by the amount of carbon sequestered by plants. You'd be cutting down forests faster than they replenish if you tried to fuel cargo ships with this method.
> And why don't you know any of this already?
I do, and unlike you I understand how existing power to gas prototypes are using biomass or industrial byproduct CO2 rather than direct atmospheric sequesteration. This is sidestepping the most challenging part of producing synthetic hydrocarbons on a large scale.
Prometheus Fuels are the main player in attempting to solve direct atmospheric sequesteration of carbon dioxide. But they've still not delivered on that objective.
See how this game can be olqyed in both directions? Difference being, all the real money, and industry, is going for green fuels and not nuclear power when it comes to ships. I tend to believe those people.
Again, how many ships have been powered by green fuels? How many have been powered nuclear reactors? One of those is infinitely larger than the other. One of these technologies has over half a century of real world usage.
Comparing white papers about synthetic fuels with the cost history of actual nuclear powered ships that were built and operated for a decade or longer is comparing apples to oranges.
We do have technology so to produce green fuel for ships, and the whole shipping industry, from carriers to builders, is pursuing that in their goal of carbon neutral in 2050.
Of course there is still the possibility of those people being oart of a grand anti-nuclear conspiracy. Or they analyzed the tech and costs and came to an informed solution, one that is now global policy. You pick.
You realize there's a nuclear powered cargo ship in operation right now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
This technology not only exists, it's being used presently. And that's on top of the other three nuclear cargo ships that were previously built. We still have those proven designs.
> We do have technology so to produce green fuel for ships, and the whole shipping industry,
We do not. Existing synthetic gas plants are not capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. They are either using biomass or industrial byproduct CO2. The former of which does not scale, the latter is not truly carbon free it's just using carbon that would have been released into the atmosphere anyway. Neither is a pathway to producing green fuels at scale. Startups are pursuing atmospheric carbon sequestration, but it's proven elusive so far.
Again, those other cargo ships, NS Savannah, Otto Hahn and the Japanese one, were all economical failures, the Japanese one was even a technological failure. That makes a grand total of around 7 civilian maritime NPPs in operation, all Russian, with less than one built per year. Global shipping needs hundreds of those, at cost point competitive with alternatives to be viable. That tech, or capacity to build those numbers, simply doesn't exist. heck, that is even mentioned as a direct quote in the Reuters article that is being paraded around.
Again, if you're going to say that civilian nuclear maritime propulsion doesn't exist, because there have only been 7 such ships built by four different countries then green fuels powered cargo ships don't exist either. Again, how many cargo ships have been powered by green fuels? How many have operated for more than a decade?
A couple of questions, answer those or just, pardon my French, shut up:
How do you think all those hundreds of nuclear ship reactors will be built yearly?
Have you heard of NOx catalysts?
Are you aware of the possibility to generate hydrogen through electrolysis?
Hoe do you square the fact that litterally nobody in the shipping industries is making the case for nuclrar powered cargo vessels?
Literally nobody, huh? https://maritime-executive.com/article/abs-completes-groundb...
Any "brilliant" thoughts on zhe other questions? Or the fact that your articke ends with pointing out nuclear propulsion was considered promising in the 50s and was a dead end ultimately?
If you want to play the game of digging up studies that didn't go anywhere, I need some time so. Just from top of my head:
flying wing passanger aircraft, that was something! Even Airbus launched studies into it, and man was it promising!
Plenty of "normal" ships are already hybrid electric like trains, so swapping out the diesel generator isn't particularly a science project and doesn't affect the already electric propellors.
You mostly need a financial incentive to burn clean methanol, ammonia or whatever. That's the hard part.
https://www.marinelink.com/news/maersks-first-teu-methanolfu...
And all the ships they've ordered since 2021 can run on methanol:
https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/12/07/maersk-to-de...
There are several green gas projects under way - capital plants take time - eg. the Gibson Island project won't be online and producing until 2026.
Prometheus Fuels is the main player trying to do direct atmospheric sequesteration. But they've not succeeded yet.
Andrew Forrest [1] has laid out plans to dramatically increase global green hydrogen production on the back of western australia's mining of close to a billion tonnes of iron ore per year (ie. experience of industry at large scale).
https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...
The aim is to do whatever required to directly fuel existing mining truck fleets and bulk carriers.
https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-systems-integratio...
We do not need an alternative to the Haber process, the idea is to use electrolysis to produce hydrogen from sea water. There is room for improvement in the process but the technology is old and well understood.
There are other ways to store hydrogen, and it's far from certain ammonia will win out in the marketplace, but there are no serious alternatives to hydrogen as an energy carrier in the long term for this application. Everything else is just impractical and even more expensive.
Just like flight fuel, it has seen little change because it is quite heavily subsidized in its current form. The day we collectively stop and start taxing it like other fuels, the market will change overnight.
Also something I learned recently is that the idea that biofuels are a no go because they compete with food is a simplistic deflection. Looking at Brazil as an example the biofuel crops like sugarcane and groundnuts are grown in marginal land in the south that wasn't being used for agriculture. The main driver of Amazonian deforestation is cattle ranching.