Enabling the safe and efficient on-board storage and integration within ships of large quantities of ammonia and hydrogen fuels (ZEWT Partnership)

Commercial shipping, including deep sea shipping (intercontinental maritime transport), short sea shipping (services between European destinations), and other ship operations with high power demand (which may include also certain aspects in IWT), requires the storage of large amounts of energy with conventional fuel capacities from hundreds to thousands of tons allowing operational autonomy up to several months. The use of sustainable alternative fuels at scale embracing a number fuel options needs to be studied and solutions developed for a wide range of applications.

Sustainable hydrogen, ammonia and other hydrogen derived fuels are potentially promising alternative fuels to make shipping fully climate neutral and independent of fossil fuels. Only very limited experience with the use of ammonia and hydrogen as fuel in a maritime environment exists today.

Hydrogen and ammonia are particularly challenging in terms of on-board storage capacities, storage methods, safe handling, space constraints and the structural integration of tanks, and their subsequent use in high power propulsion systems.

The aim is to develop large and very large storage solutions for hydrogen and ammonia (e.g. compressed H2, liquid H2, LOHC, hydrides, ammonia derived compounds) and their integration on-board. Whilst a certain fuel neutrality is sought a rigorous preselection of the most suitable type and form of fuels is required in order to come to a realistic demonstration environment as early as possible.

Research and innovation is needed with respect to the efficient and safe on-board storage and use under real shipping conditions, taking into account aspects such as pressure, temperature, explosion risk and toxicity. These aspects have to be investigated considering all the relevant issues related to the maritime environment such as structural response of the ship, ship motions and related effects (e.g. sloshing, resonance), corrosion, etc.. In order to facilitate the wide-spread use of these clean fuels, solutions should be modular with the possibility of upscaling, and pertinent technical rules should be developed.

Solutions are not necessarily limited to maritime freight transport if it can be shown that these fuels can be used economically and efficiently at the specific scale of passenger services (ferries) and IWT. This may imply different regulatory constraints and infrastructure (bunkering) situations which have to be taken into account.

Projects will address both the storage of hydrogen and ammonia at capacities exceeding the equivalent of 300 tons of conventional marine fuels in order to show the use in a realistic environment with practical range and autonomy, although the fuel capacity may be adapted to the requirements of different ship types in a first stage of development. The scope extends to the design, testing and overall assessment of on-board systems for these fuels, developing concepts and testing them at lab scale with a robust perspective of scaling up to achieve the levels needed for operational commercial vessels. The structural integration of fuel and energy systems on-board, related safety issues, supporting standards development, and the minimisation of storage volumes and distributions systems towards the energy converters will be addressed. This also needs to take into account bunkering situations as part of the fuel handling on-board.

Transport of such fuels in dedicated carriers does not fall within the scope of this topic.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Zero Emission Waterborne Transport’ (ZEWT).