Periodic Reporting for period 3 - HySeas III (Realising the world's first sea-going hydrogen-powered RoPax ferry and a business model for European islands)
Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2022-06-30
The marine sector accounts for a significant proportion of global and European carbon and other emissions to atmosphere and is one of the factors playing into global warming. Currently marine transport is completely reliant on fossil fuels. While there is some potential to reduce emissions by making fossil fueled marine transport more efficient, that potential is limited. Battery-electric options (batteries charged from shore) offer only very short range marine transport and clearly alternative zero carbon (and other emissions) fuels are required to eliminate marine emissions.
Hydrogen is one of the likely candidates to replace fossil fuels in marine transport applications and HySeas III sets out to explore that option by de-risking the construction and operation of a hydrogen fueled vehicle and passenger ferry. The availability in coastal areas of both on and offshore shore renewables gives rise to the possibility of the hydrogen fuel being produced from wholly renewable energy sources.
The formal objectives of the HySeas III project are as follows:
1. Develop, construct, certify and validate an innovative hydrogen fuel cell drive system and in parallel with developing the design of a so-powered vessel
2. Develop business models to assist ferry operators and coastal/islands authorities to optimise the land-side interfaces and overcome the capital investment barriers to the wider roll-out of hydrogen-powered ferries.
3. Encourage replication by disseminating exploitable lessons to the European stakeholder communities.
Hydrogen is one of the likely candidates to replace fossil fuels in marine transport applications and HySeas III sets out to explore that option by de-risking the construction and operation of a hydrogen fueled vehicle and passenger ferry. The availability in coastal areas of both on and offshore shore renewables gives rise to the possibility of the hydrogen fuel being produced from wholly renewable energy sources.
The formal objectives of the HySeas III project are as follows:
1. Develop, construct, certify and validate an innovative hydrogen fuel cell drive system and in parallel with developing the design of a so-powered vessel
2. Develop business models to assist ferry operators and coastal/islands authorities to optimise the land-side interfaces and overcome the capital investment barriers to the wider roll-out of hydrogen-powered ferries.
3. Encourage replication by disseminating exploitable lessons to the European stakeholder communities.
By the end of the final reporting period, the project had successfully delivered on all of it goals.
The vessel powerplant had been designed, constructed and tested - producing performance results whihc were better than had been expected (higher fuel conversion efficiency). System management strategies had been developed and it had been established how to operate the system most efficiently.
Vessel design had been completed and Approval in Principle (for the design) had been obtained from a Classification Society (DNV).
A scalable model had been developed to enable the technical specification of refuelling equipment for marine H2 fuelling to be established. Even small vessels use much more fuel than road vehicles and transferring large volumes of H2 (100s of kilos and more) presents different physical challenges to filling a road vehicle tank with 2-10kg (typically). That problem was studied in detail resulting in the model mentioned, along with strategies for adapting existing road-transport refuelling equipment to service the marine sector.
A full lifecycle analysis model was developed for comparing diesel (MGO), diesel electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell electric powered vessels. Full lifecycle analysis goes beyond carbon emissions and looks at all environmental impacts. Derivative modelling looked at the lifetime cost of owning and operating the vessel types - as expected the hydrogen fuel cell model is more expensive, however none of the fossil fuelled varinats could compete on enviromental grounds (c.80% less carbon emissions - re this also includes the relevant steel, glass, plastic etc supply emissions). It was found that the hydrogen fuel cell variant generated additional socio-economic benefits - partly offsetting the additional costs. It could be readily concluded that the lack of any meaningful carbon-pricing on fossil fuels will make it difficult for green alternatives to find purchase - and without that, it will take legislation to force change.
A hydrogen safety incident occurred during the power plant commissioning. An insufficiently tightened connection allowed the escape of a limited amount of hydrogen. Project safety planning and procedures worked as intended. There was no fire or explosion, no harm was caused to persons or hardware. Credit for the correct handling of this goes to those directly involved and also to those involved in the excellent planning for safety. Full emergency procedure was initiated involving local emergency services and the incident attracted some local press interest – largely positive. Local emergency services are using the incident as an exemplar of how to handle such situations correctly.
On dissemination: The project was represented at COP26, the BBC produced and published out web material on it, the Norwegian Trade Minister formally launched the power plant testing phase (covered on Evening TV news in Norway). The project is mentioned in UK and Scottish government development policy documents. The project website (www.hyseas3.eu) saw around 40,000 unique visitors who were mostly reading it rather than finding it (from time spent on site). The project made available a virtual reality walk through of its vessel power plant (first ever).
Several new and now commercially available products derived from the project - KMA now offer a range of new power electronics components, while Ballard Power Systems brough the world's first marine approved/certified (DNV) hydrogen fuel cell module to market - the FC Wave200 module. Sales of those new products to external parties had occured before the project formally ended.
In summary, the project acheived all of its key goals and indeed exceeded some of the team's expectations.
The vessel powerplant had been designed, constructed and tested - producing performance results whihc were better than had been expected (higher fuel conversion efficiency). System management strategies had been developed and it had been established how to operate the system most efficiently.
Vessel design had been completed and Approval in Principle (for the design) had been obtained from a Classification Society (DNV).
A scalable model had been developed to enable the technical specification of refuelling equipment for marine H2 fuelling to be established. Even small vessels use much more fuel than road vehicles and transferring large volumes of H2 (100s of kilos and more) presents different physical challenges to filling a road vehicle tank with 2-10kg (typically). That problem was studied in detail resulting in the model mentioned, along with strategies for adapting existing road-transport refuelling equipment to service the marine sector.
A full lifecycle analysis model was developed for comparing diesel (MGO), diesel electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell electric powered vessels. Full lifecycle analysis goes beyond carbon emissions and looks at all environmental impacts. Derivative modelling looked at the lifetime cost of owning and operating the vessel types - as expected the hydrogen fuel cell model is more expensive, however none of the fossil fuelled varinats could compete on enviromental grounds (c.80% less carbon emissions - re this also includes the relevant steel, glass, plastic etc supply emissions). It was found that the hydrogen fuel cell variant generated additional socio-economic benefits - partly offsetting the additional costs. It could be readily concluded that the lack of any meaningful carbon-pricing on fossil fuels will make it difficult for green alternatives to find purchase - and without that, it will take legislation to force change.
A hydrogen safety incident occurred during the power plant commissioning. An insufficiently tightened connection allowed the escape of a limited amount of hydrogen. Project safety planning and procedures worked as intended. There was no fire or explosion, no harm was caused to persons or hardware. Credit for the correct handling of this goes to those directly involved and also to those involved in the excellent planning for safety. Full emergency procedure was initiated involving local emergency services and the incident attracted some local press interest – largely positive. Local emergency services are using the incident as an exemplar of how to handle such situations correctly.
On dissemination: The project was represented at COP26, the BBC produced and published out web material on it, the Norwegian Trade Minister formally launched the power plant testing phase (covered on Evening TV news in Norway). The project is mentioned in UK and Scottish government development policy documents. The project website (www.hyseas3.eu) saw around 40,000 unique visitors who were mostly reading it rather than finding it (from time spent on site). The project made available a virtual reality walk through of its vessel power plant (first ever).
Several new and now commercially available products derived from the project - KMA now offer a range of new power electronics components, while Ballard Power Systems brough the world's first marine approved/certified (DNV) hydrogen fuel cell module to market - the FC Wave200 module. Sales of those new products to external parties had occured before the project formally ended.
In summary, the project acheived all of its key goals and indeed exceeded some of the team's expectations.
The project delivered on its promise to demonstrate a zero (fuel) emissions marinized power system capable of powering a commercial vessel (full steel construction meeting stringent European safety standards).
The power system was designed using a modular architecture which can be rescaled as appropriate for other vessel sizes. The system was capable of delivering over a MW of instantaneous power (though in this case we electronically limited it to around 900kW on account of the specification of downstream power electronics).
As far as we can ascertain, this was the first time that has been done on this scale employing a hybrid fuel cell and battery technology model
New products and system management strategies were developed
Vessel design was completed to the point where build work would normally be tendered for - with the vessel design having obtained "Approval in Principle" from a Classification Society
The eventual socio-economic and societal impacts of proving that water-borne transport can employ a fuel which does not emit CO2 in operation and allows much greater range than battery-only, is potentially extremely large, respresenting a step-change in marine power technology.
The comparitive full lifecycle analysis (model) and to ISO standards was the first of its type to be published.
We are unaware of any other modelling of large scale hydrogen as a marine transport fuel and believe our generic scalable model to be the first of its type.
Whilst we did not build an actual ship within the project, we removed many of the fears and questions relating to the idea of using hydrogen as a fuel in commerical scale marine transport.
There is no longer any question that it can be done techincally, the fuel conversion figures are better than seen in road transport,
It can be done safely (our power plant testing employed marine safety protocols despite being onshore) and the safety system/provisions were found to work when faced with an actual incident
There are major envoirnmental benefits in doing so and there are also socio-economic gains to be gleaned/captured (loclly and nationally).
The power system was designed using a modular architecture which can be rescaled as appropriate for other vessel sizes. The system was capable of delivering over a MW of instantaneous power (though in this case we electronically limited it to around 900kW on account of the specification of downstream power electronics).
As far as we can ascertain, this was the first time that has been done on this scale employing a hybrid fuel cell and battery technology model
New products and system management strategies were developed
Vessel design was completed to the point where build work would normally be tendered for - with the vessel design having obtained "Approval in Principle" from a Classification Society
The eventual socio-economic and societal impacts of proving that water-borne transport can employ a fuel which does not emit CO2 in operation and allows much greater range than battery-only, is potentially extremely large, respresenting a step-change in marine power technology.
The comparitive full lifecycle analysis (model) and to ISO standards was the first of its type to be published.
We are unaware of any other modelling of large scale hydrogen as a marine transport fuel and believe our generic scalable model to be the first of its type.
Whilst we did not build an actual ship within the project, we removed many of the fears and questions relating to the idea of using hydrogen as a fuel in commerical scale marine transport.
There is no longer any question that it can be done techincally, the fuel conversion figures are better than seen in road transport,
It can be done safely (our power plant testing employed marine safety protocols despite being onshore) and the safety system/provisions were found to work when faced with an actual incident
There are major envoirnmental benefits in doing so and there are also socio-economic gains to be gleaned/captured (loclly and nationally).