
Battery-Powered Ships Next Up in Battle to Tackle Emissions - howard941
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-06/battery-powered-ships-next-up-in-battle-to-tackle-emissions
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jandrese
It only operates in Tokyo bay to answer the first question that everybody is
going to have.

Transatlantic and transpacific container shipping is still going to be among
the last sectors of the economy to be electrified.

It's probably more practical to build modern sailing ships than to try to
electrify bulk overseas cargo shipping. Or maybe a hybrid approach where the
sails are also lightweight efficient hardy cheap solar cells that turn
electric motors to add a few knots to the speed during the day.

But even then you need massive energy storage to make sure you have power to
maneuver in a storm.

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stcredzero
_It 's probably more practical to build modern sailing ships than to try to
electrify bulk overseas cargo shipping_

Back in the heyday of the battleship, replacing the engine was one of the
things it wasn't worth doing. It's so hard to do, you might as well just build
a new ship. I have no idea if this is still true, or not. Construction
techniques have come a long way. Today, there are cruise liners that have all
of their propellers in multiple swiveling pods containing electric motors.
(They generally have generators run by diesel or steam turbine.)

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adammunich
It is absolutely still true, most ship engines are not removable without
breaking the hull above the engine. If you're going to do that, it's often
easier to start fresh.

~~~
stcredzero
_It is absolutely still true, most ship engines are not removable without
breaking the hull above the engine._

Seems to me, especially with electric engine pods, ships can be designed to
allow the replacement of the engine/generator.

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vkou
They can be, but the ones that are currently afloat haven't been.

Shipping companies have had decades of success fighting against legally-
mandated retrofits - double-hulled tankers, trivial safety features for
passenger ferries... I don't think your idea of replaceable engines is going
to get any traction.

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craz8
I recently saw this Fully Charged video about a short, but very frequent,
ferry crossing that is now fully electric, with automated charging at both
ends of the trip

The scale here is enormous, and just for a 4km journey

[https://youtu.be/rE_M1n-ClOA](https://youtu.be/rE_M1n-ClOA)

~~~
mncharity
And the new Norwegian ferry Color Hybrid was recently delivered. Not quite
twice as large (2k pax, 0.5k cars). Similarly-sized 5-ish MWh batteries, plug-
in or diesel-electric. Electric operation around ports, to minimize pollution,
and hybrid or diesel elsewhere.

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imglorp
Lots of ships run on bunker fuel, a cheap refining fraction nobody else can
use. Those 3 story diesel engines are a different breed wherein "one massive
container ship equals 50 million cars"

[https://newatlas.com/shipping-
pollution/11526/](https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/)

~~~
SECProto
In terms of global warming potential, they are nowhere close to that. The "50
million cars" statistic is specific to the SOx output of the ships (sulfur
oxides). These cause local impacts (breathing issues, view haze, damage to
plants etc) and wide impacts (acid rain) [1]. Because of the strong local
impacts, fuel grades for cars, trucks, etc had strong reductions to sulfur
content, but ships did not (though often they are required to use more
expensive, more refined fuel in port or 20km of shore or what have you).

All this to say, these ships do create super high emissions of Sulfur Oxides,
but their CO2/equivalents emissions are quite low (the lowest per kg*km of any
means of transport! [2] ). Worth addressing, but not nearly the equivalent of
50 million cars in the "emissions" that the common dialogue refers to.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/sulfur-dioxide-
basics](https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/sulfur-dioxide-basics)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2014/aug/01...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2014/aug/01/sustainable-shipping-is-making-waves)

~~~
Gibbon1
With bunker oil some fraction of a percent of generated power comes from
burning the sulfur. Tells you much what you need to know about that.

And yes it's very interesting to look at transport modes by hp per ton. You
find that ships, trains, and trucks requirements are modest compared to
passenger cars.

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gdcohen
Sounds like someone is going to have to build a network of depth chargers :-)

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flurdy
The world's largest hybrid ferry [1] has just been launched to run between
Sandefjord (Norway, on the West coast of the outer Oslofjord) to Strömstad
(Sweden, on the Eastern side of the Oslofjord) [2]

[1] [https://www.ship-technology.com/projects/color-hybrid-
ferry/](https://www.ship-technology.com/projects/color-hybrid-ferry/)

[2] [https://www.colorline.com/sandefjord-
stroemstad](https://www.colorline.com/sandefjord-stroemstad)

~~~
flurdy
Slightly further North the much shorter Horten to Moss route across the
Oslofjord will be fully electric in 2021 [1]. Though with much smaller
ferries.

[1] [https://www.ferryshippingnews.com/enova-contributes-
nok-31-m...](https://www.ferryshippingnews.com/enova-contributes-
nok-31-million-to-the-electrification-project-of-horten-moss/)

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curtis
I wonder if it's practical to stick a couple of Space Shuttle external fuel
tank-sized liquid hydrogen tanks on a typical container ship and then run it
on hydrogen. One of the problems with liquid hydrogen (not the only one) is
that it's impossible to keep it from slowly off gassing. However, if the tank
is large enough it would off gas slower than your engines would be consuming
the hydrogen.

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cjbenedikt
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/transportatio...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/electric-
container-ships-are-stuck-on-the-horizon.amp.html)

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m0zg
These should come in handy in retrofits:
[https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/365-megawatt-
supercond...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/365-megawatt-
superconducting-motor.html).

