My comments last week about alternative fuels brought my biggest postbag ever (if that’s the right term in these digital days).
To help me review all the feedback I have just pasted it all into a single document and it comes to nearly 3,500 words of thoughtful comments and analysis on alternative fuels by people who are experts in this field. This week, then, I am offering a selection of ideas from those responses.
First, hydrogen: I wondered whether it is it being over-hyped, if demand for it pushes its price up. No, suggested one of my correspondents. All you need to make it is water and surplus renewable energy and its supply chain is “ridiculously short and efficient” I was told. “So while H2 may increase in cost in the short term, in the long term its widespread use is inevitable.”
But hang on: in another email I was told that shipping has depended on high energy-density fossil fuels, and oil certainly ticks that box. LNG and methanol have only half the energy density of oil and “hydrogen’s density is far worse”. So if we are to inevitably end up using hydrogen, storage will become a big factor.
Another correspondent dismissed hydrogen in a single line in a lengthy assessment of alternatives: “H2 is not a good solution in any way: difficult regarding storage, applications and safety.”
As for emulsified fuels, I heard from the executive chairman of Quadrise, which makes a synthetic fuel called MSAR, which is an oil-in-water emulsion. His literature said its marine version has been successfully tested in both 4-stroke and electronic 2-stroke engines through a joint development with Maersk Line “leading to the issue of an Interim letter-of-no-objection”. If you have any experience of this, please let me know.
But another correspondent was not impressed by water emulsion, which “only solves one of the problems (NOx) to some extent”, he said, and another mentioned a different technique: injecting water into the cylinder. I remember that being advocated in the marine sector several years ago and Wikipedia’s entry on the subject is favourable. By my correspondent was dismissive, describing it as an “exotic fraud”.
My takeaway from the emails I have received is, in fact, unrelated to any of these observations. It is, instead, a long-term concern. “After 100-200 years the fossil energy sources will be gone or will be too expensive to use,” said one of my contacts. So “we need to use the sun’s power for transportation, living and industry.”
His proposal is to use solar energy to make synthetic natural gas (SNG), which could be stored and used in the same way as natural gas is today. It could even be stored in the then-empty gas fields.
There is much more in the feedback I have received, but the point I will make this week is that there are people in the industry who are thinking deeply about these long-term energy dilemmas. Vast amounts of energy will be needed in the future as population grows and aspirations rise, but the corresponding pollution is becoming less and less acceptable. Regulation cannot be the only answer.
One email I received closed by saying “Unfortunately, I see very little being written about the integrated picture of future marine fuels. In my opinion, Marine Propulsion would be an excellent forum to launch such a discussion.”
So I will start a discussion around these ideas on the Marine Propulsion LinkedIn forum. Add your views there, or – as many have done this week – email me with your thoughts.
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