Hydrogen fuel cell power plants for ships face the challenge of hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density at normal temperature and pressure and its low electricity-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency compared to batteries.The justification
Hydrogen fuel cell power plants for ships face the challenge of hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density at normal temperature and pressure and its low electricity-to-electricity energy conversion efficiency compared to batteries.
The justification for persevering with hydrogen as a marine fuel, though, is that other leading candidates for future fuels (such as e-methanol and e-ammonia) require a hydrogen feedstock for production. Therefore, hydrogen will always be less energy intensive to produce than these fuels.
Hydrogen fuel cells are often discredited as being too bulky for deepsea shipping, but researchers from the University of Southampton have shown that for the test case of an LNG carrier, the minimum viable setup for hydrogen was with liquid storage, a 105.6MW PEM fuel cell stack and 6.9MWh of batteries, resulting in a total system size of 8,934m3. That compared to 8,970m3 for an ammonia-based propulsion system and 6,033m3 for a methanol one.
The size of systems, and the vessels they are being installed on is gradually increasing. This week, eCap Marine reported that it will deliver hydrogen fuel cell power solutions to two short-sea container vessels being built for Samskip. The Samskip
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