ABB is working with 'Hydrogène de France' short for HDF to develop large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems that can power electric emission-free container ships.
Hydrogen is back in the spotlight in 2020. Although much of the automotive industry still shies away from it because of storage, transport and generation issues, the fact remains that hydrogen has about 10 times the energy density of a lithium battery. Moreover, refuelling is many times faster than charging at a charge point.
50 million cars
The shipping industry is still quite a polluting industry with gigantic marine diesels. The strict regulations that apply to the automotive sector are many times easier for shipping. Therefore, it is certainly a cheap and efficient way to distribute mass around the world, but it also remains responsible for about 2.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions as a result. One large container ship can emit as much air pollution as 50 million cars combined. Electrification can therefore make a big difference in this sector.
Megawatt power train
It will still take several generations of batteries to make long-distance electric shipping possible. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is already ready for short distances. The collaboration between ABB and HDF focuses on this by developing a megawatt-scale marine vessel power train. For the design, it is collaborating with Ballard Power Systems, a company specialising in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells.
A Maersk container ship of the Triple-E type, capable of carrying more than 18,000 sea containers, currently requires about 60 megawatts of power and gobbles up as much as 80,000 litres of fuel per day to do so. And these are the cleanest and most efficient cargo ships in the world. Exactly how big ABB's first drivelines will be is not yet known, but there is an indication that they may be able to build something for use in a hybrid setup. In this, hydrogen will be used as auxiliary power on larger ships.
