Why Wind Power Ships May Be The Future of Transportation
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- čas přidán 1. 05. 2024
- Why Wind Power Ships May Be The Future of Transportation. Get Air Health's Skye for your home today! bit.ly/air-health. Shipping currently accounts for almost 3% of global carbon emissions. In order to hit global net-zero targets by 2050 solutions like biofuel, green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, as well as ammonia have been held up as alternatives to fossil fuels to be used in ships. But what if we could go back to the early stages of shipping, where the wind was used for sailing, but using current and upcoming technology? Could a wind power ship blow past biofuels and hydrogen as the best pathway to decarbonize shipping?
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It's almost as if sails were a good idea
Looks good and positive for the ecosystem but needs better improvement.
Question can you do a video on how farms are unsustainable and how they use insane amounts of water and chemicals that kill bugs and animals and plants from runoff.
Are you ok with this or no?
🤔🤔🤔🤔 ... What about Cargo Ships powered by small, modular and mobile "Generation IV Nuclear Reactors" ... similar to the "Project Pele" ... Pebble Bed Technology ... !!!
To bad their wasn't a way to power cruise ships from the thousands of passengers waste
Next you'll be telling us that we can use a large piece of cloth to catch the wind and pull ships through the water. Crazy stuff!
Dude you are a genius. You should call a patent on that
I think they in push boats not pull them, sails that is
Impossible, that cannot be done
IKR it could be called sailing! This could catch on. You have to create a phone app for it or it will never become useful.
does that mean we can get new sea shanty tracks?
I am a naval architect who has worked on the design of a number of modern container ships. A couple things: all those ships were designed for a cruising speed between 23 and 25 knots - the speed is driven by the route time the owner believes is needed economically. Two of those ships - built by NASSCO in the U.S. were the first large LNG powered ships in the world.
IMO ha regulations restricting the amount of sulfur in marine fuels - HFO is on its way out. And in North American waters out to 200 nm, the max sulfur limit is 0.01% and has been for over a decade, so some progress has been made and we are working hard to get better.
make them generate electric run ship on electric engines battery's use as its base power and recharge the batteries in open water
Fairly sure the first LNG powered ship was the 'Methane Pioneer' operated on the Arzew - Canvey Island shuttle service in the 1960's. The successors 'Methane Princess' and 'Methane Progress' operated through the 1970's certainly were, as were the seven LNG carriers operated between Brunei and Tokyo Bay at around the same time. Or are you referring to dual fuel ICE powered vessels?
After I sailed on a steam turbine powered container ship (ACT 6) she was re-engined to medium speed diesel power and speed reduced from 21 knots for economic reasons. Marine Engineer
Hi You are right the first I recall were the Methane progress and Princess. I sailed on Gazocean 66,000 cu meter LPG tanker operating from the Gulf and Venezuela in the 1970’s so the technology is long established. We need to be considering the difficulties about transporting Hydrogen next by sea from where it can be generated by renewables to its marketplace.
My thoughts are like this if it use wind but can it use Solarpanels too they became so light and could be easy implemented on such ship and the sea reflects the sun so it would be placed on both sites
In 1870 a premium sailing vessel entered service, the ‘Cutty Sark’. The ‘Cutty Sark’ was 64.74 metres in length with a beam of 10.97 metres and a loaded displacement of 2 100 tonnes. She was able to carry, at best, 1 700 tonnes of cargo and to harness the energy in the wind the available spread of canvas was up to 2 976m2 which was tended by a crew of about 30 skilled men. The ratio between the sail area (SA) and the vessels displacement (D) determines how lively she was; ‘lively’ being nautical speak for ‘fast and manoeuvrable’. The carrying capacity of cargo ships is constrained in two ways, mass and volume which leads us to the ‘stowage factor’ of the cargo; the more mass on board the greater the displacement which in turn impacts the efficiency of the hull form and the sail area / displacement ratio. A vessel constrained by mass is said to be ‘down but not full’, while a vessel constrained by volume is said to be ‘full but not down. When in the tea trade, which the ‘Cutty Sark’ was designed and built for with fine lines (more nautical tech speak, so again no need to worry about it) she could carry around 600 tonnes of cargo at speeds of up to 17.5 knots dependent on the prevailing wind and had a typical China to UK time on passage of 120 days. The tea trade was very competitive so ‘time on passage’ was a large factor in securing the premium freight rate that made the ‘Cutty Sark’ cost effective. Rounding things out, her maximum available sail area gave circa 5m2 of canvas for every tonne of tea carried. As soon as the Suez Canal opened, which the ‘Cutty Sark’ was unable to sail through; she lost her advantage, raw speed, to the steam powered ships of that era who could beat her ‘time on passage’ by taking that short cut. Mechanically powered ships have improved in terms of efficiency, on a freight tonne mile basis, by at least one order of magnitude since then. After losing out to the coal burning, fire tube boiler, steam reciprocating mechanical ships of the late 19th century ‘Cutty Sark’ was relegated to the Australian wool trade, just about the bottom of the barrel in maritime terms and only one small step up from being a 'honey barge'.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
There's actually a few companies that have begun to use old style shipping--"Tres Hombres" in the EU and "Sailcargo" in Costa Rica. They aren't as large as the Cutty Sark, but it's pretty cool to see. They certainly aren't going to replace cargo ships, but they can carry smaller goods like whiskey, coffee, etc. Some consumers are willing to pay a little extra knowing that the foreign goods that they are consuming were transported almost entirely by sail across the ocean.
@@Ryan_hey As you say ‘they certainly aren’t going to replace’ and though some consumers may be willing to pay it would not be a ‘little more’ it would be a lot more and that would be on a mass & volume basis not value.
The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow between 31 October 2021 & 13 November 2021 established requirements and targets for mitigation of the production of GHG and with regard to shipping steps to reduce atmospheric pollution to acceptable levels could include, but not be limited to: -
1) Abolish the cruising fraction of marine transport;
2) Abolish recreational boating;
3) Improve fuel quality;
4) Localise production to consumption;
5) Reduce 'freight mile' distances;
6) Reduce spoilage / waste of all commodities;
7) Reduce freight carrying capacity;
8) Reduce the global population of consumers;
9) De'fossil'ise the fuel chain.
The use of any of the options above may not be the future of marine transportation but moving less material and moving what is transported over shorter distances, as in the past, should be. Together with localised production and minimised consumption a global population that has individuals’ voluntarily self-limiting reproduction to two children per parent (both male and female), might save the planet.
Shipping currently has a 'high quantity, low added value' business model and it needs to return to the 'low quantity, high value added' model it followed in the era of sailing ships. Addressing the 3% of global GHG emissions generated by shipping will be less advantageous than dealing with the 24% due to other transportation, the 24% of the of GHG emissions due to manufacturing industry or the 25% due to electrical power generation. (Figures from www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions, et al). Any alternative to the existing fossil fuel system needs to provide better value and so depends on the yield; the energy input less losses must reliable and consistently provide sufficient energy output that can be deployed for propulsion, cargo handling and domestic services. All of which must be achieved within the current limits of mass (weight), volume (cubic capacity) and cost.
I am wondering about the dirty energy cost of producing these products and their manufacturing facilities; also for all the development and testing of these technologies, let alone these new products.
@@valeriegroszmann6767 All options have costs and the proponents of anything will inevitable try to skew the comparison in the favour of their preference.
Pertaining to nuclear energy the carbon footprint of all the extra bits of hardware and the fuel, including processing thereof, from ground to propeller, are the external costs that never seem to get considered.
With regard to propulsion with electric motors powered by ‘green electricity’, leaving aside the fact that there is no truly ‘green’ electricity, the best we can do is low carbon impact both at installation (capital account cost) and production (revenue account cost). The storage medium will have a carbon cost. As will the means of generating the electricity, either from wind energy or solar. The problems with the wind as an energy source are variability, reliability and low energy density; also relevant in this context is that the canvas, cordage and extra manpower needed for sailing ships were never a very benign environmental option so please discount any idea of sail as ‘sustainable’ and all this is without the problem that if ‘the wind don’t blow the ship don’t go’.
Another option is ‘alternative fuels’ or ‘bio fuels’ such as Ammonia (NH3), Biogas (basically good old CH4 or Methane) and Hydrogen (H2). All require producing or harvesting and processing which have fiscal, environmental and energy costs or impacts, before their energy is delivered to the point of use, and their use will generate effluents that will impact the global environment one way or another.
‘Bio fuel’, how green is it? Short answer, not very; major problem is land use and the limited upside is that the carbon released into the atmosphere has recently been taken out of that space in the growth part of the cycle minus the processing deficit. On a small scale, to use up waste products from other industries like forestry, animal husbandry or agriculture, ‘bio fuels’ are as good a source of carbon molecules as you could get but they, like all 'alternative' fuels, still involve a combustion stage and therefore some noxious effluents
A properly configured LCA (life cycle analysis) would determine any cost / benefit balance. However as with any LCA it is necessary to select the functional units, system boundary and parameters assessed to make sure you get the answer that is desired; always embarrassing when ‘the data’ shows that what you hoped to prove ‘bad’ was in fact ‘good’ or vice verse. For functional unit in Environmentalism ‘overall carbon footprint’ is usually a good one, so for example what you save on kerosene not burnt in a jet aircraft engines better not be outweighed by what you consume achieving the same purpose using a recreational sailing vessel with hydrocarbon based structure and motive power containing lots of embedded carbon. ‘System boundary’, well where ever is likely to yield the ‘correct’ result is a safe bet; ‘parameters assessed’ again what best puts a cutting edge on the particular axe you wish to grind may determine which you choose to assess.
As said in an earlier comment reducing the amount of shipping to satisfy ‘needs’ rather than ‘wants’ will reduce the impact as will changing from a ‘high volume / low cost’ back to a ‘low volume / high added value’ business model.
There's another type of "sail" that is very interesting, is a autonomous tethered aircraft - it is essentially a powered kite that flies up to a high altitude, and then pulls the ship via the tether cable. This could also generate electricity to charge batteries, to power electric motors when the aircraft are not possible to use.
This same technology is possible for generation of wind power. Makani is a company that was/is developing this use.
Interesting
YES!! I was going to mention this - but a top comment already! I hope he does a video on this at some point. Kite sails for the win!
Do you have sources for this? I only found one thing mentioning it for power but not in the capacity your mentioning, it sounds interesting(and makes sense as you have greater wind streams the higher you go to exploit).
How heavy is the kite? Will it easily change direction because of strong winds?
@@joshuaobrien6137 Hmm i have seen that technology too, quite some time ago, but i cant remember if there is already a prototype or if the video i saw was a simulation.
Ah yes, return to good old sailing, nostalgia
What’s old is new again
@@UndecidedMF If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
@@bluppblupp3616 The 19th century was square rigged. We have better sails now.
@@dougaltolan3017 :D the sails are not the problem. The wind is. What everybody, who is in favour of wind power as a mayor means of propulsion, always forgets: In the 2nd half of the 19th century the sailing ship was at its most advanced stage, established since centuries. And nevertheless, the sailing ship was wiped out in a few decades by ships which were: More expensive to build, required more crew, had much higher operating costs, needed more qualified personal, required often refuelling, had less cargo carrying capacity and had frequent breakdowns incl. boiler explosions. Before we go back to sail ships, we will go back to steam ships.
@@bluppblupp3616 it seems you don't know much about sails and sailing, I DO.
Great video as always. One minor nitpick: When ships "idle" waiting to get into port, they usually do not run their main engine but a much smaller generator unit. While it still consumes fuel, it is really not that big of a issue when compared to the massive main engine.
Thanks for sharing!
@@UndecidedMF That is a a new rule for port of LA(main port for US west coast) can make a major difference. The rule will require the ship to stop 130 miles from the coast while they wait for days to get space in the port for unloading. That will be out in the current going north at 4-5 mile/h and they will have to run the main engines while waiting to stay in position.
@@bknesheim The vessel will not run their main egine. They will drift for hours/days and will start their engine max once per day for 1-2 hrs to go back to the original position.
@@bknesheim what about this thing called an anchor?
@@bowez9 doesn't work in deep waters.
Very interesting topic.
The Guardian article that you included is more than 12 years old. Sulfur dioxide pollution from shipping is much less of a problem due to regulatory changes. This is more recent: "Starting Jan. 1, 2020, all ships must burn fuel with a content of 0.5 percent sulfur [down from 3.5% previously.] to comply with an International Maritime Organization amendment to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) known as Regulation 14."
As the video points out e, shipping still produces a lot of carbon dioxide.
Shipping also produces a lot of particulate pollution.
In 2001, I sailed from New York USA to Brest in France. I sailed aboard a full rig in mid-September to early November.
What surprised me was how often we had wine quiet. The route we sailed was supposed to be wind and current favorable for this period, but our speed was between 8 to 10 knots at best.
Skeptical of this solution. Even with modern technology. The Clipper class did not carry much load.
Tea and wool clippers were all about speed. Because the first ship to arrive got the best prices. Carrying capacity came a distinct second.
Exactly,and now Europe has found the same phenomena applies to offshore wind ,where they can get low winds for months on end, nuclear power is still steady and relatively cheap in Europe,except Germany where they want more coal and France where they too want to burn more coal.I'm sure the leaders of Germany and France are controlled by Putin.
@@paulbedichek2679 Modern nuclear technology is safe, especially if they go for molten salt reactor. Tragish that the project in the US was terminated and buried.
But when dealing with a corrupt system, what else can one expect.
@@crocutalcorvus444 All political systems are corrupt, the US is toward the least corrupt, both the Russian and Chinese are very corrupt but the Chinese are quite successful while the Russians stagnate, despite their wealth of natural resources, so corruption is not the deciding factor, The molten salt reactor was not halted because of corruption or had anything to do with weapons,the Chinese programs are not directed by the United States,we are very pleased they saw then presentations by Kurt Sorenson on the LFTR reactor and devoted tremendous resources to it after all these years they have a test reactor of 2MW,so it is not so easy, it would be many years before they get useful work from it.
You can be sure that Germany is rotten through and through why else would they close reactors providing cheap clean power? Because the politicians are paid and compromised by Russia which sells them coal gas and oil, with reactors closed the Germans are extremely easy to manipulate they wouldn't do anything to help their fellow Europeans and even blocked the Baltic states from sending old artillery.Shamefull.
@@crocutalcorvus444 How corrupt is your country? Molten Chloride Fast reactors ,would work well for marine applications we haven't finished the designs and engineering yet. For up to date nuclear news worldwide read WNN.
im so happy that in 2021 we are finally learning about the power of the wind & boats! what a time to be alive!
Just wait until they hear about sun and hydro power!
Hi Matt, the clippers were speciality ships for the Tea Trade, like large racing yachts, with a relatively small cargo capacity. The majority of sailing cargo ships were the "Square Riggers", of considerably greater capacity, and noticeably slower, in fact they plied their trade well into the 20th century. I recommend , if you haven't read it already, "Last Time Around Cape Horn" by William F Stark.
Thank you for this video! One thing I like about both rotor and wing sail technologies is they can be retrofitted to older ships. That seems like a definite advantage over alternate fuels like hydrogen and ammonia that can only be implemented with redesigns that pretty much require a new ship. There are a lot of cargo vessels out there already - and unlike cars, the companies that own them intend to use them for as long as possible so they can get their investments back. So technologies that can be retrofitted to older vehicles are much more likely to be adopted.
I kind of love the wing sails, and hope they work out.
You say their claim to reduce carbon emissions by 90% is kind of hard to believe, but I hope there's something to it. It would be wonderful to have a new age of sail, but this time made more efficient by wing sails and weather tracking technology.
Really enjoy your videos Matt! I'm a software engineer and avid sailor, so I found this video very compelling. I would like to nitpick for just a moment though. You make it sound as though rotor sails, wing sails, and hybrid systems are unproven technology still in the development phase. Wing sails have been used by America's Cup boats for decades now. You said yourself that rotor sails were first tested in 1926. And go to any marina with sailboats larger than about 28ft and you'll find that nearly all of those sailboats have diesel engines. In other words, hybrids. You also didn't mention SkySails, which is a German-based company already selling a large kite/spinnaker-like sail for cargo ships to improve efficiency when going downwind. I think it's more accurate to say that the technological challenge is fitting these tried and true propulsion methods onto cargo ships and convincing shipping companies to adopt them. Thanks and keep up the good work!
they are still in development (or in trial) phase, otherwise they will already selling this technology to shipping company to reduce the fuel cost...
Nitpick 2.0 : I don't think I'd refer to sailboats with diesels as Hybrids. In the case of a sailboat, the engine is generally only used for getting into and out of the marina and not normally used in conjunction with the sails when travelling from Point A to Point B. In the case of the video's examples, the sails are used simultaneously, in conjunction with the diesel engine as supplementary power. < end nitpick >
If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
@@DavidM2002 It's very common for sailboats to "motorsail" when wind is light. We still get some power from the sail and supplement it by running the engine. I've done it many times. That said, I understand that my 38ft sailboat is a bit different from a 1000ft cargo vessel. But the principle is the same.
Great video but as a mariner, I think many of you forget that different ships has different trade so they will have different requirements for power and propulsion. For instance while wind can probably work well on deep sea trading (i.e. the large tankers, bulkers etc that trades between continents) it will not work for vessels that are for instance serving the offshore installations (like wind etc) and other costal short sea trade. Therefore I don't think it is one solutions that will fit all, but rather a combination. Further, as someone commentated below the ships also need power when they are idle or manoeuvring and here clean fuels like amonia and hydrogen can be a solution for all types for ships.
As always, good content. I think your presentations are sound and engaging. Through the years, I’ve worked as an educator and would have like to have used these for various discussions. Excellent work.
the video is just a bunch of nonsense and this idea... useless.
Cool as sailing ships might be I do have to point out a few bugs in the reasoning.
About those 20 knot clippers:
a) Those 20 knots were top speeds under very favourable circumstances. Like in the roaring fourties and screaming fifties.
b) Modern cargo ships can do a sustained speed of 20 knots. Or even more. Or less, if the owners and agents decide that fuel economy trumps speed. Sailing ships had no choice. A modern cargo vessel needs about 6 weeks for a round trip China to Europe. Or 80 to 120 days for a round-the-world trip. Cutty Sarks fastest were 108 days (Woosung to Start). Thermopylae was 91 days Fuzhou London.
c) Those clipper ships were transporting high value and time sensitve cargo. Only high value cargo. Everything else was shipped in slower ships. If at all.
d) Those clipper ships were small.
e) Sailing ships with maybe 1000 tons of cargo hat a crew even larger than a 20,000 TEU behemoth.
f) Sailing ships are complex, expensive and fickle.
And the list goes on.
About Mr. Flettner's rotors:
a) They suck effeciency wise.
b) They combine the worst of both worlds. The disadvantages of sails with - you may have guessed it - the disadvantages of needing mechanical propulsion. Yes, they still need engines 24/7.
Very good points! I do want to say though that it's the 'furious fifties' and the 'screaming sixties'. ;)
There are huge disadvantages to wind power. That's why shippers went away from FREE fuel to paying millions. But man the hybrid approach seems like a fantastic idea. When you showed that they can be retracted is exactly when I was on board. I'd bet with some careful re planing of routs/timing you could get the wind power up to 80-90%
If you could get the wind power to 90% your going to lose time. Months and months of time per trip.
There are actually very little disadvantages to sailing. The main reason they stepped away from it is because you need skilled labor what you don't need with engines.
@@rurikschutte2188 Absolutely. On some routes. Fortunately that's not all routs and I would guesstimate not most. However recently they have dropped speed even more to save fuel so speed isn't the biggest factor anymore.
@@mustoskiff1321 Well, that and they wanted to kill less people. Because it spite of what some people say. Killing ones staff isn't good for business.
If shipping companies had to pay the "true" cost of burning tons of diesel, they wouldn't hesitate to augment their ships with wind power. The "true" cost would including paying for the pollution and damage to the planet. They get the resources they destroy for free, which I would argue, isn't capitalism at all.
@6:40ish you mention that sails aren't like wings, but that's precisely how they work - particularly when sailing close to the wind.
Perhaps ports should introduce a scheme where ships with "green credentials" can skip the queue at port. Then ship owners and manufacturers would have incentives as greener ships will turn around faster in port. It would also be helpful if merchant ships had to publish their emissions data publicly.
I love the idea that green ships would be given priority admission to the ports!
An interesting idea! Thanks for watching.
It is interesting, for a few years. What happens when the green ships numbers surpasses the other ones? I mean you can push them to the back of the queue, but that seems a bit accessive, especially for ports that have high traffics.
@@13thxenos The aim is to encourage shipping to go green. If this causes the majority of shipping to go green then the plan has worked! Nevertheless the calculation for how green a ship is can always be tuned so that ships that are more "green" will always move further ahead in the queue. Perhaps the phrase power gives way to sail might take on a new meaning? :)
I’ve met a few times the CEO of Norsepower, he’s a really cool and smart guy! Definitely a lot of potential in the maritime industry. Long time lurker, now subbed! Greetings from 🇫🇮
A lot of shipping can be thought of as a conveyer belt, with the speed of transit not being of prime importance. . . especially if it’s going to be sitting in a 60+ Ship que at the receiving end. Sure, “all of the above” for reducing fuel use . . . I’m not an economist, but it strikes me a lot of the Carbon Woes are due to having embraced the “just in time” supply chain model. That’s a concept that’s about ready for the trash can.
Slow ships, running at their “double nickel “ equivalent for fuel efficiency for everything that is “conveyor belt equivalent”, and air freight for the stuff that “just has to get there”. There’s a lot less resistance to motion in the stratosphere than there is on the ocean.
It seems you do not understand the scale of the amount of freight transported by sea, and obviously have no regard for the relative economics of Air freight vs Sea freight.
As always, a genius video. Matt can you please do a video on cleaning up the plastic in our oceans? And how best to combat commercial over fishing?
Thank-you!
Ultimately, the best solution for this is to move manufacturing close to where items are sold. You will always need shipping for natural resources, but manufactured goods can be manufactured anywhere.
true...just about everything should be thought of in terms of energy storage.
logical fallacy
Otten true, but not always. Some things are better produced near the origin of the raw material (for instance if the raw material is much heavier or bigger than the final product) or where energy is cheap and clean (like aluminium, which needs tons of electricity for its manufacturing)
Except there are huge energy efficiency gains to be had from centralized industry where tertiary and secondary products are produced right near the end product. And in a world with over 7 billion people and products which are incredibly complex to produce, local manufacturing simply is not a viable option. Especially since factory work SUCKS ASS and pays pennies. No one wants to do it unless they have absolutely no other choice.
Nah, then it’s not possible for the politicians to manipulate the inflation! Better to import everything from low-cost countries so that nobody actually notices things have become more expensive😅And def do not peg the currency to gold, then the printer will be useless🤣
By my point of view, as in all aspects of energy topic, the right way is the right mix of more than one technology. Why don't we think about hybrid ships with electric-fuel cells systems (ammonia is really promising) in combination with wind sailing? The total balance would be great, the help of wind can actually lean to downsize fuel tanks and globally use in a more rational way a secondary source as green hydrogen. By the way, Magnus effect could be used not only in form of drag, as in wing sailing systems, but leaving the routes unchanged it can be used to produce electricity, reverse cells and produce more fuel to enhance the overall efficiency.
Cheers
What about using sails and wind turbines to power the ship
@@tylersoto7465 my idea was something like this. I just pointed out that the routes can be affected by the wind in a classical sailing situation. This can affect transport time sensibly, for this reason I think systems should be hybrid.
It's good to see companies getting on board with wind power in all shapes and sizes but disappointing to see the hyundai and wartsilla and other ic manufacturers harping on a bout carbon neutral ammonia, hydrogen and methanol, I have been a diesel nut all my life and can see these options are at best a short stop-gap from my perspective the only route forward for heavy shipping is nuclear. A neuclea plant on a ship would take up less space and dead weight than conventional ic plant, it seems to work on military vessels so why not civilian one's.
Keep up the good work great vids
nuclear power is ridiculously expensive and impractical, and wouldn’t fit on a ship like that. itd be good to power a city tho. keep in mind the US only has like 71 nuclear powered submarines which shows how expensive they are
Wind powered ships exists
Me : Hey , I've seen this one
Matt : What do you mean you've seen it, its brand new!
😂 Didn’t mean to imply this was a “new” technology. Just that it’s gaining a lot of interest by the industry now.
I keep waiting for the solar fabrics they've been promising for years to hit mainstream uses. If you are going to put a giant sail up might be nice to harvest some electricity while you are at it.
There is that land surfer that they've tested that can go faster than the wind and blowing straight at it's back, and of course you can even head at an angle to the wind and go faster than the wind. I know ocean currents are significantly slower, and of course you go faster going with the currents, but I wonder if there might be some ways to create water sails of sorts to magnify that a bit.
I suspect the problem with "water sails" is the large amounts of drag they would create. Boats try to keep what is called the "wetted surface area" to a minimum because too much hull drag is a big problem.
@@Garryck-1 but there are ways to further minimize hull drag. The fastest catamaran in the world uses aerofoils like the OceanBird for thrust, but also hydrofoils to push the vessel up, out of the water, the faster it goes. At top speed, the catamaran even no longer touches the oceans surface and the only wetted parts are the hydrofoils, which create all the lift.
I was always wandering - you can't simply lift an entire cargo ship out of the water due to statics considerations - but if you manage to lift these things by even a meter or two, that would quite drastically reduce drag due to the shape of the hulls vessel.
With ordinary sails the wind directly abaft you is a slow way to sail, only done when you need to run before the wind in bad weather. Building a ship that can sail faster than the wind on a reach is something that has been known for centuries - building one that can viably do it carrying cargo and in bad weather is another matter.
Hi Matt, I really like your videos & because ships are my business (I'm a marine engineer with 40-years in the industry: 10+ years sailing on ships and the rest operating, repairing, modifying and surveying them) I thought I'd chip in with a few thoughts on this one.
I've always taken a great deal of interest in anything to do with energy-saving or operational efficiency on ships and I'm always keen to evaluate new ideas and equipment and give them a fair but practical shake.
Some of the data you quoted for the bulk carrier fitted with 4 moveable rotors didn't seem to add up, although I appreciate that the manufacturer probably provided you this data so this is no criticism of you, however;
78 tons of fuel saved over a period of 518 sailing days, or a 12.5% fuel saving suggests a fuel consumption without the rotors of 624 tons, which is a daily consumption of 1.2 tons/day. This is the daily consumption of the ship's diesel generators, supplying electrical power, not the main engine.
The typical loaded speed range for a ship of this size/type is 12-15 knots with a fuel consumption of 28-35 tons/day depending on vessel speed. Over 518 sailing days the expected fuel consumption would be between 14,504 and 18,130 tons of fuel.
Even if the rotors saved 78 tons of fuel, this represents only 0.4-0.5% of the expected consumption.
The less than 2-hours to install a rotor also makes me very skeptical too, but the fuel saving figures were a big enough red flag, so I left it there.
New ideas and equipment are often interesting, with many having practical potential however, it's sometimes difficult not to be cynical about the businesses who are marketing these ideas.
Thankfully I'm a glass-half-full guy most of the time so I'm not a cynic yet!
Interesting video nonetheless, thanks for sharing.
Best regards,
Jack
Personal opinion, Flettner Rotors are 'an idea with a great future behind them' (:-) May I reuse your figures?
@@BernardLS Sure, no problem
Obviously, the most efficient way to do things is to just get rid of the ships all together and just huck the boxes in the ocean and hope they all show up where they are intended to go.
Hey, you could make the big boxes out of metal. Then you could add point ends to help speed. Then you could add propulsion units .. we could call them ummm, SHIPS!
What about kite sailing? A big kite in front of the ship. Big kites can generate A LOT of power in open sea, getting the winds that are powerful meters over the ship surface and the kite can get pulled down when needed. Kites can be controlled left / right, and Up / down if needed, like when kite surfing.
Dont forget the space efficiency, all the space taken up by sails takes away from cargo space, kites don't have this issue as much. This video is about it czcams.com/video/UEhCvR43nh8/video.html and its really positive, but the idea doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since 2007, so they may have exaggerated quite a bit.
Not to sure I'm comfortable with using Ammonia as a fuel for ships. I can see the benefits over hydrocarbons, but the risks of environmental damage in the event of a leak, even a small one, are huge. Ammonia is a corrosive gas at standard temps and pressures. Storing it requires that it be kept pressurized or at cryo temps. Its both toxic to people in moderate concentrations, and highly toxic to marine life and ecosystems in low concentrations. While Anhydrous ammonia gas is lighter than air, when combined with humidity it becomes heavier than air. This is due to it being hygroscopic and readily mixes with water.
A leak while a ship is in port could be disastrous not just for anyone working or living nearby due to a toxic cloud, but also to the marine environment.
While I think ammonia use as a fuel would be great in some applications, the hazards of its large scale use in shipping far exceeds those of hydrocarbons.
IMO
You make very good points there. Imagine an ammonia leak at sea! It might produce a death boat with nobody at the controls, that no one can approach without wearing protective gear.
We had a rotor sail ship sailing on a passenger ferry between Turku (FIN) and Stockholm (SWE), but the fuel savings weren't much, and the rotor sail was actually removed sometime last year during maintenance. Apparently, the problem was that the ship was mostly sailing inside the Finnish, Aland and Swedish archipelago, so the wasn't enough open sea to make it efficient. I'm hoping we'll get to see it again on the route between Helsinki and Stockholm where there's lot more open sea.
Super yacht Black Pearl has an interesting rig setup for sailing. High tech and it can reach a maximum of 30 knots. Even half of that is impressive.
While de-carbonizing shipping and travel in general is important, the topic not mentioned is simple reduction in use. Covid in 2020 demonstrated how impactful this is. STOP consuming so much! STOP burning stuff ;-)
Better yet, buy stuff that isn't shipped overseas.
What about kite rigs? I don't know how they compare in terms of power generation but they don't take up any space on the ship itself. Also, they operate higher up in the atmosphere where the winds are stronger and more steady and they should scale quite well. I was surprised you didn't at least mention them.
SkySails is a company that's trying to bring these to market.
i can't even imagine how big the rig would have to be to move 200k-500k tons.
czcams.com/video/USDTiTpy-64/video.html
@@pocasolt4 4 videos from 4 years ago and only 240 subs.
yeah....wont work.
Great as they might be, there is a problem I see with sails, you can only put sails on a vessel if they don't obstruct the vessels function. This limits the use of sails to only a couple ship types: RoRo (car carrier), livestock, cruise ships and bulk carriers/ tankers. Container ,multi purpose vessels and coasters are the tree primary vessel types that would really benefit from a more environmentally friendly form of propulsion, but due to them being loaded from the top a sail would not work (and because a multi purpose ship often already has cranes).
Also you kept mentioning klippers (20kn) were faster that modern day shipping, this is true in some sectors but not in the sectors you mentioned. Pretty much all modern containers ships go 20-24 knots when traveling large distances over the ocean, only extremely large bulk/tankers vessels or more smaller/coastal vessels go under 20 knots.
This is an incredible CZcams site. It's like reading "New Scientist" but Matt shows all the good points and all the down points. This site is AMAZING. Thanks, Matt I would buy anything on your recommendation. BLOOMING GOOD SITE. All the best from the UK
Question, what are the risks do the ship crews have to be prepared for if they have to go through an unavoidable storm? will the ship have different characteristics when the sail towers are deployed?
Sails on ships:
You couldn't live with your failures, and where did that lead you?
Back to me.
Matt, how about steam? Produced by small modular reactors. Yes I said the nuke word. The US Navy has been operating nuclear powered ships for 70 some years. Sure would like to see us get over the fear factor of modern safe nuclear power.
@@MrJJOConnorhow about both,
It's powered by sunlight and air, it sounds like something a hippie would say. And said sunlight concentrator would heat up a take of water to make steam or pressure.
Very interesting topic! Thanks for sharing Matt, your videos are top notch.
The US Navy answered this question already, specifically on the 24th of September 1960 with the launching of the USS Enterprise. The answer hasn't changed in over 60 years, just use nuclear for a small number of the most massive vessels (like the Maersk "E line" ships) and regulate the absolute hell out of their maintenance, operation and safety. The technology is already old hat and is in its 6th - 7th generation, though it is unlikely the US department of defense would consider licensing anything never than 3rd gen mobile reactors (think Nimitz class carriers like the one depicted in the movie "Top Gun").
I have read on wind assisted ships in Popular Science back in the 1980's. The idea isn't new. Theoretically, a MHD (is it spelled as magnetohydrodynamics) effect using salt water as the working fluid could dramatically increase a ships speed and efficiency and could use green electricity or nuclear generated electricity from batteries in the future. Yes, using the wind to help sounds as a doable and practical idea. Problem is that most business people want a payback period of 3-4 years. If they can't meet this payback period then an investment in stock or real estate will produce a greater return than adding wings or rotors to their ships.
Yes, Amazon has only gotten away with 20 years of long term over profit taking. The poor man is in rags by now.
@@SamKernot Not quite as you're forgetting that adding a carbon tax will introduce a butterfly effect that will cascade onto the prices of literally everything else, as 90% of all consumer goods are byproducts of oil / energy from oil / natural gas. So it wouldn't really make anything cheaper, everything else would just get more expensive.
With ship service lifespans greater than half a century, the shipping industry necessarily takes a long term view when it comes to equipment investment. I would guess they will be very happy with a payback period up to at least 10 years, because 10-25% fuel savings is extremely tempting.
That's part of the point: who will be able to reduce the carbon emission would be able to sell at a lower price and/or profit more
The mutual goal is to survive, not make things cheaper
Then we can reason about how to survive at the lower cost
Magnetohydrodynamic drives quickly went out of favour as they're heavily dependent on the salt concentration of the surrounding medium. Sea water isn't even salty enough to run a MHD drive efficiently, but it doesn't get better in colder water currents that hold less salt and even worse if you're in a 10-mile radius of an estuary that drops salt content significantly.
We should concentrate on using everything that runs without fuels (hydrofoils to reduce drag, aerofoils to generate thrust and reduce fuel consumption, solar to produce on-board energy in harbours) and for the rest try to use the most efficient form of drive (electric engines) with green fuels of energy high efficiency, like hydrogen.
I'd like to also hear about kite ships
Yeas, missed that tech in this video .
Well informed and reasoned video as usual. Keep up the good work guys
Cargo ships account for the worlds 3% carbon emissions while transferring 98% of the worlds cargo (from food and cement down to your phone and pc) they do not need radical changes. More efficient engines, hulls, paints and so on are enough to keep them as the most eco-friendly means of transport. The cost of doing something like that is immense and will make an already extremely volatile business, dry bulk shipping operates at a loss 30% of the time, at the cost 60% of the time and profits only 10% of the operating time. The profit is generated either if you manage to sell the ship while the market is high, which is hard, or by scrapping the vessel at the end of her life.
Surprised you didn't bring up kites- I saw a report of those many years ago, and even though the benefit was considerably lower, the cost was much, much less- let alone the space they took up. Look up towing kites for ships- and where did that go? I was hoping for an update.
I was wandering about this too. Here is one video in English: czcams.com/video/UEhCvR43nh8/video.html
I think they are still used, but you don't see them often, because they are used on the open sea.
My recollection is that kites are much tougher to automate the deployment and retraction and need more crew intervention.
It is dead.
@@bluppblupp3616 proof?
Nice video. A few points:
1: We have been shipping forever. The people settled in australia 50000 years ago arrived by sea. There are transaction logs found to the east of Mediterranean older that 1200 BC saying some pharaoh returned the shoe he ordered. Chinese coins/seals have been found in ancient native american sites.
2: Biomass is not green as matured functioning forests are cut for it. Monoculture plantations can never replace that.
3: Pee is a cheap ammonia source. Would be cool if that is used.
With all the dire content on yt and social media lately, I love vids like this that give me hope for humanity.
Interesting to see that sea trials are finally happening. It’s going to take every technology we have to decarbonise shipping. It’s a pretty tough one.
🤔🤔 ... What about Cargo Ships powered by small, modular and mobile "Generation IV Nuclear Reactors" ... similar to the "Project Pele" ... Pebble Bed Technology ... !!!
@@theethicsofliberty4642 - get with the program... we are moving forward, by going backwards... next step after "sails" will be oars. By 2050 there will be enough starving population to use for rowing.
@@gheaflorin green tech might make things cheaper cleaner and better for everyone given time, preventing that is the only thing that is backwards
stupid idea. Carbon is no problem
@@protonneutron9046 should burn as much of it as we need too
Great presentation Matt. For me, I like an "all of the above" type approach to energy utilization, including on ships. I love sailing, so, yeah, make it so.
I'm not an engineer but was wondering if it might be possible to also produce zero carbon electricity by having the Flettner rotor drive a generator as well?
I was thinking about this as well , but I think the resistance that a generator would put on the rotors would affect the lift they produce too much, but I think recall a company using this conceptfor energy on boats as well I'm not sure tough
@@catinthehat906 The Flettner rotor does not provide thrust unless it rotates, no matter how strong or where the wind comes from - and that rotation needs to be powered. Stop whatever powers that rotation the Flettner rotor will stop spinning, and no amount of wind can cause it to rotate. And objects that don't spin cannot drive generators.
@@MrAranton Apologies, that is a complete misunderstanding by me of the Flettner rotor concept which I though erroneously was acted on by the action of wind, but it actually needs to be driven as you say by a conventional motor. I guess my thought is more akin to multiple vertical axis wind turbines (eg Savonius) that might be mounted on ships to drive an electric propeller?
@@catinthehat906 There's a trade off: While such turbines would generate electricity, they would also increase drag. I think under most circumstance, the elecricity generated by such turbines wouldn't be enough to overcome the additional drag, let alone the friction between the hull and the water. And that's not even considering that more surface for the wind to attack can make the ship a lot harder to control in stormy conditions.
You should also keep in mind: Some of the wind hitting the turbine would be generated by the motion of the ship, so you're essentially trying to harvest the energy you invested to get the ship moving.
Ultimately sails are always going to be a more energy efficient means to move a ship than using the wind to generate electricity that then powers an electric motor, because there will be losses at each conversion of. Sails don't convert energy, they merely redirect it.
You might use a wind-turbine not as a means of propulsion but to power electrical equipment on the ship. That would be roughly the same as using a dynamo to power the lamps on a bycicle - However: an electrical generator inside the ship, driven by the engine that's needed anyway is going to be a lot simpler and most likely more energy efficient.
Excellent, beautiful. I think ships with sail or Savonius rotors and submerged water rotors to move generators on board. It can charge batteries, produce liquid air in order to sell this energy to cargo shipping or to shore facilities.
While wind based propulsion is tricky for container-ships which need a lot of free space on and above the decks for the container-cranes to do their work, this does not need to be a hurdle for other areas of maritime transport.
Transporting liquids like fuel which can be pumped in and out of the tanks or carrying certain types of bulk goods, depending on their mode of loading and unloading could be done old-school.
There aren't many reasons other than economies of scale and crew wages relative to fuel cost as well as slightly less consistent transport times that would prevent the use of primarily sail-powered transport ships.
While steam engines started to be used in the mid 19th century, sailing transports remained viable well into the 20th century, with "windjammers" enjoying popularity up until WWII, so revisiting the windjammer for non-container transport wouldn't even be that far fetched.
Obviously a modern windjammer would require a more conventional auxiliary propulsion system, probably a combustion engine, but even this could be augmented. Say the prop shaft isn't driven directly by the backup engine but is a hybrid-electric system with an array of batteries forming part of the ships ballast. Furthermore, sail area is surface area which could potentially be partially used to capture solar energy to further reduce consumption of combustible fuels by auxiliary generators - even moving only on sails a large transport would still need to keep the lights on and the navigation & communication systems running.
Hey Matt. My dad was talking about this to me a couple of months ago.
I'm somewhat skeptical that wind power will ever be able to economically move the amount of mass in a cargo ship the size of todays ships. At best wind power may supplement traditional power systems, but the cost will have to be so low as to be a no brainer. Either that or we'll have to go back to a vast fleet of much smaller ships....which would be pretty cool really. Maybe the day of the true sailing cargo ship is coming back ?
Just like oil, don't we only have like 50 years of wind left on the earth. 🤔 And if we can start consuming it at a greater rate it won't last nearly that long. 🤣🤣🤣
Wind power will work out, though it'll absolutely be automated. In particular, the flying wind generator scheme will wind up adopted because shipping companies don't want to _buy_ fuel in the first place, so it's exactly what they ultimately want.
Did you watch the video at all? He addresses all of those points.
🤔 ... What about Cargo Ships powered by small, modular and mobile "Generation IV Nuclear Reactors" ... similar to the "Project Pele" ... Pebble Bed Technology ... !!!
@@absalomdraconis If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
Designer Philip C Bolger once commented that the reason power replaced sail for cargo delivery was not that it allowed faster delivery, but that it allowed more total trips over the life of the ship.
Old sail ships were pretty labor intensive too, although that was coming down even in the days of the clippers and Windjammers, with power winches and other labor saving devices. So there is a possibility that the cost calculation will eventually change back to wind.
Sail does not scale up well. Modern shipping is carried out in vessels that would require capture devices with the area of a small farm. One of the limits to wind power is the kinetic energy available to be harvested in the mass of air it is possible to contain. When sailing ships were being succeeded by power driven vessels the largest that were built included the ‘Prußen’ and the ‘Thomas W Larsen’. The ‘Prußen’ used a crew of 45 to move up to 8 100 tonnes of cargo and was lost at sea following a collision with a power driven vessel. The ‘Thomas W Larsen’ used a crew of 18 to move up to 11 000 tonnes of cargo this vessel was lost when at anchor in the Scilly Isles where she was sheltering from a storm.
While watching the spinning masts the thought came to me about adding electricity generation to also supplement a greener form of transporting goods across the oceans. That could double the benefits of the technology.
Clipper ships were not faster than modern container ships The Cutty Sark was the fastest clipper ship Top speed: 17 knots. Modern container ships (300 m/1000 ft long) can 'Slow steam' 18-20 knots. 23 knots is typical. However between the last days of the great clippers and modern container ships, yes the clippers were as fast and faster - but the wind is not reliable. Just take a look at the worldwide guide for sailing cruisers. Want to leave Vietnam and sail to Australia? (which I'm planning to do in a couple years): April. That's it. Check the container ship schedules: just about any day of the year. And clearly I'm a fan of sail. These Flexner systems seem promising, so maybe they'll do like sailing cruisers, move around the world in annual patterns taking advantage of the prevailing winds, while other tech is still used in ships on routes moving against prevailing winds.
Also clipper ships do not have the huge amount of mass that cargo ships do. To make a comparison of the two and say clipper ships are faster is disingenuous in context of talking about using wind power to fuel cargo ships.
Wendover's video taught me that Cargo ships today run slow on purpose (14 knots I think?) for peak fuel efficiency. Plus they will end up waiting at clogged ports anyway.
The ships can go faster but the shipping industry just isn't build to handle it faster, at scale. Especially since they actually save dollars by going slower, thus shipping items for even less money.
So even is sailing is "slow" or requires less efficient routes. I wonder if the speed would actually counter that and cause ship time to equal out, since speed is not an expense but a design/route issue
exactly, we can make ships go faster, but they wouldn't be nearly as efficient
There are so many errors and omissions in your post. Cargo ship speeds vary considerably dependent on type, size, cargo being carried, and operating area. Smaller coastal trader 10 kns, VLCCs 12-15, bulkers 13-18, containerships 22-27, passenger ships 22-26. The most valuable cargo is in container ships and its important they get their cargo to market, hence size and speed. Shipping companies want more speed, not less. ETA's ARE important as missing a slot might mean weeks waiting at anchor. The customer wants his stuff. Many routes are unsuitable for WASP and many do not provide the 20% savings - 8-12% is more likely. Some ships construction and cargo carrying layout make WASP impossible to fit, eg containerships. WASP will never be "the" answer. It may be part of "an" answer, but the question may never be solved due to conflicting requirements from the IMO and shipping companies/customers. There is a reason why sailing vessels ceased being used in the 1800's and it hasnt changed. Transportation will just get more expensive.
the video is just a bunch of nonsense and this idea... useless.
Great video. These wind powered ships have been around since 1928. Scientific American has wrote several articles about them since the early 1980's. Not sure if this technology will take hold. Seems like it should gain ground if the price of shipping continues to rise though. I hope it does.
Nice one, although I expected also information about kite-style sails and the option to run the Flettner rotors by the wind itself, or a small wind wheel.
There'stwo easy ways to reduce thew environmental footprint (finprint? flukeprint?). The first is simply cut down the amount of consumer goods. The second is to do more local manufacturing of goods.
There was a sail assisted tanker built and operated in Japan back in the 70s or 80s
Nuclear! Would allow for faster and larger ships reducing costs of transport and lifecycle emissions
‘They’ say nuclear is cheap, it’s not it is expensive, and has a large embedded carbon quotient as well as being complicated, dangerous, not universally socially acceptable and having only ‘no need for refuelling’ as a questionable advantage; actually it does need refuelling just not as often. When ‘they’ do need to refill the warming up stuff it takes considerable longer than pumping tonnes of thick black stuff, cSt380 HFO, or thin runny stuff, MDO, onboard which is one of the reasons HMS Queen Elizabeth (QE) and HMS Prince of Wales (PoW) are pushed about by ICEs and gas turbines thus using a similar fuel as the aircraft that fly off of them. The Royal Navy (RN) with a high degree of skill and expertise uses, at vast expenses to the UK taxpayer, a current operational nuclear fleet of 11 submarines (also known as ‘boats’) in two flotillas, seven attack subs and four ballistic missile boats. The carbon footprint of all the extra bits of hardware and the fuel, including processing thereof, from ground to propeller, are the external costs that never seem to get considered.
Disposal, once it wears out, of both the machine (that was a ship) and fuel is another can of worms best left unopened. The 26 RN nuclear powered boats no longer in use are laid up (some in Rosyth and some in Portsmouth) awaiting long term deconstruction including dealing with the fuel rods and other irradiated material. The USN is not, as far as I know, a commercial organisation working to very tight margins and also has the skill and expertise to handle the complexities of nuclear power; so as well as submarines their aircraft carriers are nuclear powered and each of the current iteration has a build cost three times that of QE/PoW, bigger crews and even more generous funding. For those who still think that nuclear energy might be the answer I recommend this report: - www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-risk-of-sunken-nuclear-soviet-submarines?ocid=ww.social.link.email. The navy of the USSR might have been under resourced and over extended but it was still generously supported in comparison with merchant shipping. Another, similar but more extensive view, may be found at www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-few-nuclear-powered-cargo-ships-If-it-works-for-ice-breakers-and-submarines-why-hasn%E2%80%99t-it-been-established-for-merchant-vessels. Why not use nukes? It is down to engineering, finance, socio-political attitudes and safety.
@@BernardLS You’re paid by Russian oil oligarchs, UK is an advanced nuclear nation, its navy has a long tradition, of course they use nuclear for its submarines, Rolls Royce has been supplying those reactors for decades, now they will use that expertise to build 20, SMR’s for civilian use, using higher enriched fuel than Vivian reactors have so far, this reduces costs, making reactors smaller and able to run years without refueling or producing spent fuel.
I'd love to see mocks for container style cargo ships (boxship) I'm not sure how loading would work since it be very expensive if a crane knocked a rotor out of commission
I remember somthing like this being featured in popular science issues during the late 1990', early 2000's. Some even featured kite-like tugs to help tow ships accross the oceans.
The enviroment benifits is pretty negligible in this situation but the cost savings for shipping companies could be incredible ecspecially if fuel prices go up and installation costs keeps going down.
Maritime shipping is about 3% of global emissions. Got to chip away at every sector if we are going to get our emissions down.
the video is just a bunch of nonsense and this idea... useless.
With advancements in manufacturing tech like robotics and 3D printing, I wonder if we'll start to see a drop off in global shipping. I also wonder if countries will make a sustained effort to shorten supply chains and reduce dependence on foreign markets.
To say nothing about the drop in tanker traffic. If all goes well.
@@dieterheinrich8377 yeah, that is looking increasingly likely. International trade IS a good thing, but we definitely need to be thinking very seriously about mitigating the impact.
Not a hope in hell. As 2nd & 3rd World countries become wealthier, the demand for goods will increase as will the demand for more ships (or larger ships) and bigger port facilities.
@@csjrogerson2377 the thinking is that local manufacturing will become a lot cheaper and so the cost of local production will fall to the point that purchasing things built far away will become the more expensive option. We'll see what happens, but it seems like a reasonable possibility.
3d printing is great for rapid prototyping... but for a mass scale production plastic injection molding is still prolly much cheaper...
The big problem with wind is intermittency at sea level. That’s why wind turbines keep getting taller - to take advantage of more consistent wind speeds at higher altitude.And also why most of these solutions look at just improving efficiency. So what is really needed is biofuels or green ammonia and methanol propulsion systems. I think green hydrogen is just a pipe dream. Biofuels still emit carbon dioxide - supposedly carbon neutral, but remember much of that carbon is sequestered naturally, green ammonia and methanol, like hydrogen are going to be very expensive to manufacture. But remember, even natural gas would be better than fuel oil which is only used because it is cheap. You could cut shipping emissions just be using natural gas, and cut the dirty noxious emissions to zero. But your imported goods are going to cost more.
I was a megayacht Mechanic . I worked on one of the first hybrid boats . Electric drive trains like what this would need in certain situations when thiers no wind would likely not do well in a salt water environment as far as longevity and chasing ghosts in the electrical sytems. Ending up bieng powered likely by a traditional diesel engine.
Trust me on this one. Maybe after a series of prototypes and tons of r&d though maybe.
Remember, it has to be safe to be ensured by lloyds of london at this size.
So 2024? I doubt it's sucess
The main solution to this problem is that goods need to be made locally as much as possible. This would reduce or eliminate the need for shipping! This will also help to secure supply chains from breaking like we have been witnessing.
I'm super skeptical about the magnus effect sails. The limited surface area and the fact you have to keep them rotating make me think that it's kind of dumb
Tests show it works.
You should look up some actual figures instead of just theorising.
There is a good reason commercial shipping dropped wind power last century ...and that reason still applies.
The wind is unreliable and unpredictable, even non existant frequently.
Normal maritime shipping operations require predictable transit times, a missed docking shedule will cost serious moned and have a knock on effect on all subsequent sheduled transit locations....easily outweighing any fuel savings.
It seems few people are aware of the financial implications , ...and subsequent on cost to all goods transported,...of both increased shipping transit times , and ALL of the alternative fuel sources mentioned ..Hydrogen, Methanol, Ammonia, etc
Boundary layer
Hello Matt! Long time fan here. Could you please add a post video screen to allow the time to like your videos? Your content is very interesting and because of that I, and probably many others who watch, am so attentive that we listen and watch all the way till the end. We need time to remember to like it. Lol! Keep up the great work! 😁
2:00 "Clipper could reach a top speed of 23 MPH in favorable wind conditions... side note, that is faster than today's cargo ship"
Granted, comparing top speeds is a little unfair. The modern ships can presumably cruise at or close to their top speed most of the time, while the older vessels could only do so when the winds were blowing the right way. Comparing typical average speeds is probably more interesting.
And, of course, some adjustment for cargo capacity might make sense as well. Best I can tell, we're talking about modern ships that can carry 40x of the cargo (and likely with a smaller crew)
Back in the old days they followed the trade wind route, in which the winds are stable and predictable. They typically had good winds for most of the voyage except for crossing the equator where they could get stuck for weeks waiting in the gazing sun
Maersk Emma speed: 25kts.
Most cost effective speed : 20kts (being revised downwards due to changing economics)
Fastest cargo ship 33 kts
It does sound like an unfair comparison considering the weight of these cargo ships. Not an engineer, but I imagine it would come down to wind/engine power to weight ratio and things like hull drag.
Do we know if the companies have done a comparison between directly powering the ships with wind power and using the rotary turbines to generate electricity to power the ships? You will lose energy in the conversion, but it makes your energy gain independent of wind direction.
They sure have, for over 100 years on and off. The power created by windmills on boats is greatly offset by the drag of the wind against the ships travel. You don't get that on stationary land windmills. Then there is the crazy logistics of a 400 rpm meat slicer on the deck of a boat that has to be able to swivel as the wind changes.
Havent seen the idea being developed anywhere.
@@dnomyarnostaw Your not going to build a windmill but a rotary system like these designs have. That eliminates both problems that you have stated.
@@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344 Vertical Axis Wind Turbines produce less usable power than Rotors. They dont even get used for land based systems for that reason.
@@dnomyarnostaw Except we are not comparing them to wind mills. We are comparing them to these sail concepts. Some of these sail concepts are essentially the same as vertical turbines. The difference is that in one case it is directly providing forward motion, with a decreased efficiency based on wind direction. The other case it is indirectly providing this motion with a decreased efficiency due to power conversion.
@@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344 It doesn't matter. The maximum "thrust " or power provided for the ship is way less than any type of wind turbine.
Then there are large losses from a wind turbine to any propeller through a transmission.
The Math and experimental evidence is nearly 100 years old.
Great video as always, but
Old ships may have gone 20 knots, but they doesn't have the capacity of a large cargo ship
And cargo ships are going at a slower speed to use less fuel cos it helps lower fuel costs
I remember seeing an article and I believe it was popular science in my youth talking about ships working exactly this way with large rotating cylinders on their decks.
Molten chloride fast reactors will be suited for civilian maritime use, instead of reducing diesel pollution by 5% it will eliminate it as well as powering the ship at twice the speed, and give power to shore when docked.
I'm interested in how much fuel saving (on average) you could achieve by just strapping traditional sails on such a cargo ship. It would probably not be economical/feasible to do so, but it would give a good idea what those 20% fuel saving with these technologies mean.
I imagine the main constraint on using traditional sails is the personnel requirement. as far as i can tell a typical crew is maybe a dozen people on a cargo ship, and you'd need at least that many people to man the rigging
@@davidtee5367 Yep. That would be the problem.
@@davidtee5367 Not to mention the health and safety issues with people climbing up into sails.
@@davidtee5367 wake up guys, .....On modern sail boats all the sail handling is automated and powered. No manual human effort involved. Even sail trimming can be controlled by autopilot systems.
There are several large , multi masted, sail (assist) powered commercial cruise ships already equipped with these systems, as well as the numerous “rich mans toys” mega yachts.
However , ignoring the “toys” those cruise ships are mostly a marketing feature, rather than a practical propulsion system ( main propulsion engines are still used)
@@davidtee5367 You are living in the 1900's. It is trivial to automate sails these days.
Interesting topic, my wife is a high level marine engineer working mostly on different solutions to make ships more environmentally efficient.
These sails might be a good addition for some of the ships but not for the whole fleet.
The first and most important thing is to minimise global trading. But other than that there are not much better solutions than a form of bio fuel. Either a alcohol or a oil, burned in a combustion engine with exhaust treatment installations. For smaller vessels a fuelcell burning either hydrogen or ammonia might be possible in the future but is not a developed technology yet, and especially hydrogen is not exactly the most efficient thing we know. It’s a bit of a waste of good energy.
Global trade will not be meaningfully reduced, _if_ at all. Wind powered ships of various sorts will prove vital.
If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
Naam, I calculated that propeller efficiency on a ship could be increased from 60% to 70% by increasing the prop diameter 67% and decreasing the RPM by 55%.
I think that the main problem is our consumption of products/goods that force that much of transportation in the first place.
If we would reduce the need of transportation and use this tech we could have a good chance to a real difference.
Windpower: *"You couldn't live with your mistake. Where did it lead you? Back to me"*
Why aren't we just making nuclear powered ships? That seems to work well enough for military purposes. After all the main costs for shipping companies are fuel, so why not use nuclear? It's much cheaper as a fuel, takes up less space, and fits most green energy requirements. Yes there will be some adoption costs, but those can be mostly negated by using nuclear only on new ships. And I'd imagine the increased personnel cost would be easily offset by fuel savings. Am I missing something obvious here?
safety and the few countries that have that technological advantage wouldn't want to give that away.
@@Robbedem I'll agree on technology bit, but as for safety, I can think of few safer applications than something that spends the vast majority of it's time in the middle of the ocean.
Nuclear powered ships only work for extreme cases that are not equivalent to the needs of civilian shipping. The capital cost for nuclear marine propulsion is high, the risk of nuclear proliferation from US marine nuclear technology is high, and it requires a highly trained crew. We can't make cost effective land-based small module reactors yet. So directly using civilian nuclear powered ships is too big a jump for technology. Better to figure out molten salt reactors for grid energy production first.
Nuclear us really expensive.
Just think; would you have full confidence in the management of a nuclear reactor under the control of an anonymous entity only traceable, perhaps, via a letter box in a FOC (flag of convenience) nation state? If you are, could you sell that confidence to Japan, the state that hosted the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations as well as more recently the Fukushima ‘event’? Then try that same, or a similar, sales strategy on Ukraine, the nation state that as a part of the USSR (CCCP) hosted the Chernobyl ‘event’. Modern iterations of nuclear energy, thorium fuel, molten salt reactors, small modular reactors or fusion reactors, will carry the legacy of past problems. It is the global trepidation of anything with 'nuclear' in the name and the economics of nuclear having transitioned from 'energy to cheap to charge for' too 'the costs of remediation are incalculable' that will prevent the adoption of nuclear energy as a means of creating energy at sea. Modern reaction systems may have overcome the safety problems but the general public, having been misled in the past, will be reluctant to believe the fresh new promises. The incident of the ‘Ever Given’ blocking the Suez Canal, March 2021, may also have a little to add to this debate. The cooling water on ships tends to get taken in from near the bottom so when running aground the inlets are in a prime spot to get plugged up restricting, if not stopping, the flow of coolant. One thing that the TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents all had in common was that the supply of coolant, or rather lack thereof, was a fundamental cause. Similarly and only months later, May 2021, had the ‘X Press Pearl’ been nuclear powered then a major port for a populous nation in the global South would have possible been the site of a significant exclusion zone due to a non power plant related incident. If the ‘X Press Pearl’ had on board a fired up but ‘safe’ molten salt reactor and found herself having to run down the possible 12.5 megaWatts of energy in the power cycle would a stable cool down have been possible?
In my opinion, shipping isn’t too hard to decarbonize if we use nuclear ships, much like aircraft carriers. The only challenge is passing green regulation to ensure there are no regulatory challenges at ports!
Just think; would you have full confidence in the management of a nuclear reactor under the control of an anonymous entity only traceable, perhaps, via a letter box in a FOC (flag of convenience) nation state? If you are, could you sell that confidence to Japan, the state that hosted the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations as well as more recently the Fukushima ‘event’? Then try that same, or a similar, sales strategy on Ukraine, the nation state that as a part of the USSR (CCCP) hosted the Chernobyl ‘event’. Modern iterations of nuclear energy, thorium fuel, molten salt reactors, small modular reactors or fusion reactors, will carry the legacy of past problems. It is the global trepidation of anything with 'nuclear' in the name and the economics of nuclear having transitioned from 'energy to cheap to charge for' too 'the costs of remediation are incalculable' that will prevent the adoption of nuclear energy as a means of creating energy at sea. Modern reaction systems may have overcome the safety problems but the general public, having been misled in the past, will be reluctant to believe the fresh new promises. The incident of the ‘Ever Given’ blocking the Suez Canal, March 2021, may also have a little to add to this debate. The cooling water on ships tends to get taken in from near the bottom so when running aground the inlets are in a prime spot to get plugged up restricting, if not stopping, the flow of coolant. One thing that the TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents all had in common was that the supply of coolant, or rather lack thereof, was a fundamental cause. Similarly and only months later, May 2021, had the ‘X Press Pearl’ been nuclear powered then a major port for a populous nation in the global South would have possible been the site of a significant exclusion zone due to a non power plant related incident. If the ‘X Press Pearl’ had on board a fired up but ‘safe’ molten salt reactor and found herself having to run down the possible 12.5 megaWatts of energy in the power cycle would a stable cool down have been possible?
@@BernardLS Nuclear reactors for ship-propulsion are much smaller than power reactors, leading to a surface-to-volume-ratio that makes passive cooling really easy, making core-melt-downs impossible.
Nuclear reactors have been used for propulsion on both military and civilian ships for many decades and are a very mature technology. The spent nuclear fuel can be recycled in waste-burner (fast neutron) reactors.
All of the countries with major nuclear accidents that you mention above are intensifying their efforts to decarbonise with nuclear power.
Obviously there would have to be strong regulatory oversight by the IAEA for nuclear powered ships, probably through satellite-enabled remote monitoring.
@@JGZimmerle ‘They’ say nuclear is cheap, it’s not it is expensive, and has a large embedded carbon quotient as well as being complicated, dangerous, not universally socially acceptable and having only ‘no need for refuelling’ as a questionable advantage; actually it does need refuelling just not as often. When ‘they’ do need to refill the warming up stuff it takes considerable longer than pumping tonnes of thick black stuff, cSt380 HFO, or thin runny stuff, MDO, onboard which is one of the reasons HMS Queen Elizabeth (QE) and HMS Prince of Wales (PoW) are pushed about by ICEs and gas turbines thus using a similar fuel as the aircraft that fly off of them. The Royal Navy (RN) with a high degree of skill and expertise uses, at vast expenses to the UK taxpayer, a current operational nuclear fleet of 11 submarines (also known as ‘boats’) in two flotillas, seven attack subs and four ballistic missile boats. The carbon footprint of all the extra bits of hardware and the fuel, including processing thereof, from ground to propeller, are the external costs that never seem to get considered.
Disposal, once it wears out, of both the machine (that was a ship) and fuel is another can of worms best left unopened. The 26 RN nuclear powered boats no longer in use are laid up (some in Rosyth and some in Portsmouth) awaiting long term deconstruction including dealing with the fuel rods and other irradiated material. The USN is not, as far as I know, a commercial organisation working to very tight margins and also has the skill and expertise to handle the complexities of nuclear power; so as well as submarines their aircraft carriers are nuclear powered and each of the current iteration has a build cost three times that of QE/PoW, bigger crews and even more generous funding. For those who still think that nuclear energy might be the answer I recommend this report: - www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-risk-of-sunken-nuclear-soviet-submarines?ocid=ww.social.link.email. The navy of the USSR might have been under resourced and over extended but it was still generously supported in comparison with merchant shipping.
Another, similar but more extensive view, may be found at www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-few-nuclear-powered-cargo-ships-If-it-works-for-ice-breakers-and-submarines-why-hasn%E2%80%99t-it-been-established-for-merchant-vessels. Why not use nukes? It is down to engineering, finance, socio-political attitudes and safety.
@@BernardLS Yes, military nuclear ship propulsion is expensive, just like any military equipment. Civilian nuclear is expensive because they took a military design, scaled it up so much it became unsafe, and then compensated the safety shortcomings by adding a lot of regulations, operating procedures and redundant active safety systems. The modern nuclear industry has learnt from these mistakes, and the next generation of nuclear will solve all of the problems.
While parts of the supply chain still run on fossil carbon fuels, everything has some carbon footprint. The one of nuclear is comparable to solar-, wind- and hydro-power.
I like it that these sails push directly. Some other option would have been to place a kind of windmill which produces electricity which then powers the normal propellers. That would mean conversion losses although I don't know if it would be more than a few percent. But the fewer conversions, the better.
I suddenly wonder if compressed air made with a special type ship wind mill (not too high, independent of wind direction, no effect itself on the movement of the ship) could be used for a kind of booster jet engine but again there would be losses.
Putting a huge windmill ob the deck adds air drag, if it blows in the wrong direction, if it comes from behind its just a lower efficency sail...
Thats just a sail with one Conversionstepp
Another sail type that is already in use on a limited basis is a Kite Sail. These would be very useful if you're traveling within 60 degrees of downwind, they're of no use if you're traveling abeam or upwind. Yet another option would be to hire graduates of the United States Navy Nuclear Power program, 60+ years of operation with NO major mishaps with the reactors.
relying on wind...... u could be stuck in the middle of the Ocean for days....
I wonder why none trying to use Jacques Cousteau's turbosail. That "sail' is way more efficient than a regular sail, without the inconvenience of a rotating mast.
Yeah, but its way less efficient than the Flettner Rotor.
@@dnomyarnostaw still 5 times better than regular sails. The greatest advantage of the turbosail over the flettner rotor is that it need less power to work (no giant cylinder spinning, but just a small fan who create a vacuum inside the cylinder to produce the same effect). Also, you can hug a functioning turbosail without being thrown overboard... who's convenient for turbosail huggers. 🤣
@@vivalarevolucion9 5 times better than regular sails just isn't enough for commercial use. Turbo sails have never been used except for Cousteau. They don't produce as much power (7-8 times as much thrust as ordinary sails for Rotors) , Turbo sails are not self optimizing for wind direction, and Turbo sails are far more mechanically complex with the internal baffle controls and direction controlling mechanism.
The power to run the spinning cylinder on a Rotor is only slightly more, but it has the effect of creating multiplied lift in light airs, whereas, the low pressure area of a turbosail is very limited due to its physical constraint's.
As far as hugging a rotor, you can run your hands over a maximum 500 rpm rotor with no bad effects except a friction burn. You don't see any guards on rotor sails.
You will never see another Turbo Sail in use, ever.
Just a bit of nostalgia now.
Your videos are always Interesting and informative! Good job.
Glad you like them! Thanks for watching.
I wish you'd gone over how the fuel savings of these technologies compared to the cargo capacity sacrificed to accommodate them. Saving fuel is all well and good, but not if it means you're using more fuel per unit of cargo overall.
Wind's utility seems to be limited to a supplemental role for efficiency gains. Why isn't nuclear submarine technology adapted to power some of our biggest ships? Accidents are always a concern, but surely these can be overcome through good design and navigation technologies that minimize human error. I can't imagine a mishap being as uncontrollable and difficult to contain as Exxon Valdez. Nuclear just needs to be made safer and healthier than what we currently have. It's a rather low bar to cross.
Yeah, but you'd be amazed at what some of the ship captains are like. You probably don't want them in charge of nuclear reactors.
@@eyeballengineering7007 true, safety would be an issue. And AFAIK alll small nuclear reactor designs are top secret.
(I think only 3 countries have that technologie -> USA, Russia and France)
Nuclear submarine technology is expensive and requires trained engineers. In addition, US nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium that is basically bomb grade so it would be a proliferation risk. The US only uses nuclear power for carriers and for submarines - for all others it found that fossil fuels were cheaper to operate. It makes more sense to nuclearize the grid and produce methanol than to use nuclear power plants aboard civilian ships.
If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
He never said it was "a major propulsion system". Its AUXILIARY! Its an assistance method.
Great video with encouraging information. There are multiple ways to lower the use of fossil fuels and wind would be a great alternative. I think we can save the planet with good economical science and really don't need government involvement.
Clipper ships being faster than cargo ships is a very good example of comparing apples and oranges...
No. This is EXACTLY the same idea that was floated right after the "oil crisis" in the 70's. Right down to the exact same design being tested. It didn't happen then for the same reasons it won't happen now. The added cost and handling problems overshadow savings in fuel consumption.
New materials available might make the idea worth revisiting
Well, technology has developed. But hydrogen is better than wind by a longshot.
@@bartekjankowski8000 No. Even with carbon fiber (insanely expensive) it won't. Fuel today is much cheaper in real dollars than it was back then. So combined it isn't going to happen.
There’s no doubt that a cargo ship from the future will need to use wind power. Anything else is flat out incompetent. Of course they will also need some other power, but taking more than 80% of propulsive power from the wind is easily achievable without any new knowledge whatsoever. The rotating “wing” is a dead end. The efficiency is stupid low. The only reason they are not rejected is that engineers feel better about things that look like machines and have a seemingly cool way of working.
It’s quite easy to make a mainly sailing cargo vessel that can move fast and have reliable passage times. It needs to have an actual boat designer look at the shapes and functionality. Present cargo ships are designed predominantly as industrial units, where total efficiency is disregarded. If a cargo plane was designed with the same mindset, it could never fly.
The hull and superstructure needs to be streamlined, have little windage. Cargo must be inside the ship, not stacked on top of it. The under water parts must be better than just cargo boxes. They need to be seen as actual vessels. Probably foldable leeboards are needed, as a dramatically more efficient way of limiting leeway. Also an easy solution, that has been in use on sailing cargo ships in northern Europe for 600 years. Soft wing rigs or rigid ones that can be lowered is the right setup for propulsion. Airplanes use wings, because that’s the only usable option. The task on a ship is exactly the same one.
The cargo ships of today are so poorly configured because there was no motivation for not being extremely wasteful. Now there is. If shipping is presented with the true bill for their wastefulness, they will clean up in the blink of an eye. As mentioned, all necessary knowledge has been available for decades, much of it even for centuries. There’s no excuse anymore.
I was shocked that the rotating wing gave them a 12 to 20% reduction in fuel use.
@@eyeballengineering7007 : About the same reduction as reducing speed from 22 to 17 or 18 knots. . .
@@dewiz9596 one thing I missed though, did they gain that percentage while maintaining the 22 knots? That would be a bonus.
I don't think you know what you are talking about. These are for profit corporations running these ships, there is profit motive to not be wasteful, because every little waste they create is a loss of money for the corporation. That is why ships have gotten bigger and bigger over the years, because the bigger they are the less waste they create. A larger fleet with more ships is more wasteful than a smaller fleet with bigger ships.
Almost all of the drag a container ship will experience will come from the water not the air. This is why ships are not typically built with a shell. A shell would just add more weight to the ship causing it to sink deeper into the water and increasing drag. The air creates very little friction compares to water. The hulls that are underwater already are designed to cut through water very efficiently. It would be difficult to improve on the designs.
@@evancombs5159 I do know this topic quite well. You’re partially right and partially wrong. Most items, including ships, look and work the way they do because “that’s just how it’s done”. That holds true until someone makes a quantum leap.
Nokia and the other cell phone companies were among the biggest in the world. They should be smart about phones and their market potential, right? Reality check (iPhone) proved that they were completely incompetent, idiots. Microsoft had as a core business strategy far into the nineties that internet would fail, and then that they would take it over. Of course Gates and Ballmer are smart, but you can still be an obvious idiot. There are loads of similar examples.
The shipping companies are specialists in making money in the system they know. They have no clue about what will disrupt that system, and are clumsily looking for what form the disruption they see on the horizon will have. They consider the Magnus Effect “chimneys”. Anybody with even superficial knowledge will see they just can’t do anything useful. It’s simple aerodynamics. This (and much more) proves that the shipping companies are indeed totally incompetent, even flat out stupid, on this topic.
About drag: If looking at normal motor ships in no wind and no waves, you are right. The majority of drag is in the water, the air resistance is minor and the normal hull shapes are not horrible, albeit also not really good. The reason for their shapes is that it works well enough, for a lowest possible price and to make as quick as possible payback. The problem is that if we set a longer time perspective, which is the point here, and look at reality on oceans, we find that the no wind and no waves scenario is very rare. The test tank knowledge becomes partly irrelevant. Experience and a more complex understanding become necessary.
The fact is that the current propulsion systems will disappear and wind is an easily available proven source of propulsion power. Notice what is said in the video, the clipper ships were FASTER than current cargo ships. The clipper ships had better hull shapes, but very inefficient and difficult to use rigs. We now have much more knowledge about both aero and hydrodynamics than a hundred and fifty years ago, and we have insanely much better materials. We can make more efficient hull configurations and dramatically better rigs.
If a cargo ship has the wind as its source of power, the ship must be seen as an integrated propulsive energy system. The hull and superstructure cannot be seem
n separate from the rig, since the total efficiency is influenced by all elements. This is especially true upwind, when the current ships sometimes cannot make forward speed because the wind resistance is more than the engine can supply….
With a better design, that would not at all be a problem. The reason they don’t have that, is that the current business models are set to not care enough about wastefulness. It’s more important to increase the amount of stuff transported per time unit with as low as possible investment. The fuel is ridiculously cheap. They try to not waste it, but not very hard.
Really cool concepts and ideas, even if the sail is a bit further from realization yet. I would imagine the reduced weight from fuel is a double benefit, as they will probably be able to carry more cargo, thus increasing how profitable each trip could be.
If anybody thinks that wind power i.e. sailing is really a option for shipping: Please look into a history book covering the 19th century shipping transformation. Before we will use wind power on a major scale, their will be steam ships powered by tripple expansion engines. Wind power has absolutely no future as a major propulsion system. This true for the last 150 years and will remain so.
As usual, great episode Matt. But I can’t believe you skipped over kite sail wind power again, which is already in use on ships big and small.
We have nuclear powered submarines, why don’t we have nuclear powered cargo ships?
Economics
I concur with New Zealand,
Nuclear subs are publicly funded. They aren't supposed to turn any kind of profit.
Plus the level of oversight needed to protect a reactor on a cargo ship absolutely dwarfs that of nuclear subs.
So I don't think it makes much sense.
Just think; would you have full confidence in the management of a nuclear reactor under the control of an anonymous entity only traceable, perhaps, via a letter box in a FOC (flag of convenience) nation state? If you are, could you sell that confidence to Japan, the state that hosted the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations as well as more recently the Fukushima ‘event’? Then try that same, or a similar, sales strategy on Ukraine, the nation state that as a part of the USSR (CCCP) hosted the Chernobyl ‘event’. Modern iterations of nuclear energy, thorium fuel, molten salt reactors, small modular reactors or fusion reactors, will carry the legacy of past problems. It is the global trepidation of anything with 'nuclear' in the name and the economics of nuclear having transitioned from 'energy to cheap to charge for' too 'the costs of remediation are incalculable' that will prevent the adoption of nuclear energy as a means of creating energy at sea. Modern reaction systems may have overcome the safety problems but the general public, having been misled in the past, will be reluctant to believe the fresh new promises. The incident of the ‘Ever Given’ blocking the Suez Canal, March 2021, may also have a little to add to this debate. The cooling water on ships tends to get taken in from near the bottom so when running aground the inlets are in a prime spot to get plugged up restricting, if not stopping, the flow of coolant. One thing that the TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents all had in common was that the supply of coolant, or rather lack thereof, was a fundamental cause. Similarly and only months later, May 2021, had the ‘X Press Pearl’ been nuclear powered then a major port for a populous nation in the global South would have possible been the site of a significant exclusion zone due to a non power plant related incident. If the ‘X Press Pearl’ had on board a fired up but ‘safe’ molten salt reactor and found herself having to run down the possible 12.5 megaWatts of energy in the power cycle would a stable cool down have been possible?
We've had. Mutsu (reactor removed, now diesel), Otto Hahn (reactor removed, now diesel), NS Savannah (reactor removed, now museum) and Sevmorput (refurbished, operates in Arctic under nuclear power).
Nuclear is the future
Would it make sense to mount the sails on the outer edge of the ship? Perhaps a set of folding or retractible sails along the outer rim of the ship deck would allow for more cargo room? I don't know how much wider that would make the ship and if that would cause problems.
Weather mapping, Tow barges, sail and solar.
All of these things can be used to make shipping Slower but Green.
Slower ships mean more of them.
More ships means more jobs.
I see this as a win win.