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Transportation Technology

The Funky Boat Circling the Planet on Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Gas (wired.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Victorien Erussard, an experienced ocean racer from the city of Saint-Malo in the north of France, was halfway through a dash across the Atlantic when he lost all power. Never again, he thought. "I came up with the idea to create a ship that uses different sources of energy," he says. The plan was bolstered by the pollution-happy cargo ships he saw while crossing the oceans. "These are a threat to humanity because they use heavy fuel oil." Five years on, that idea has taken physical form in the Energy Observer, a catamaran that runs on renewables. From a report: In a mission reminiscent of the Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered plane that Bertrand Picard and Andre Borschberg flew around the world a few years back, Erussard and teammate Jerome Delafosse are planning to sail around the planet, without using any fossil fuel. Instead, they'll make the fuel they need from sea water, the wind, and the sun.

The Energy Observer started life as a racing boat but now would make a decent space battle cruiser prop in a movie. Almost every horizontal surface on the white catamaran is covered with solar panels (1,400 square feet of them in all), which curve gently to fit the aerodynamic contours. Some, on a suspended deck that extends to the sides of the vessel, are bi-facial panels, generating power from direct sunlight as well as light reflected off the water below. The rear is flanked by two vertical, egg whisk-style wind turbines, which add to the power production. Propulsion comes from two electric motors, driven by all that generated electrical energy, but it's the way that's stored that's clever. The Energy Observer uses just 106-kWh (about equivalent to a top-end Tesla) of batteries, for immediate, buffer, storage and energy demands. It stores the bulk of the excess electricity generated when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing as hydrogen gas.
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The Funky Boat Circling the Planet on Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Gas More

The Funky Boat Circling the Planet on Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Gas

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  • There's an existing method already (Score:3, Insightful)

    by djinn6 ( 1868030 ) on Friday July 06, 2018 @07:18PM (#56904802)

    The rear is flanked by two vertical, egg whisk-style wind turbines, which add to the power production.

    I guess these folks haven't heard of sailing.

    • what's funny is that dude is saying bad things about bunker oil fueled cargo ships when his wimpy setup could never power such things.....but sailing or augmenting with sails is indeed an option being seriously persued

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Using the wind for propulsion directly you are affected by things like wind direction and speed. These work with wind from any angle and generate electricity that is used to power the motors.

    • the guy lost power during a trans-atlantic sailing race. I'm a bit puzzled as to why that was a huge problem, but he does seem to be somewhat aware of the method. He also uses as his base hull, a former transatlantic racing sailing catamaran. I don't understand why people think that something other than sailing will be magically more efficient than, well, sailing... I would think they should have put a large vertical axis wind turbine near where the mast would be, it would likely provide a lot more powe

  • A boat that is just a giant solar panel. Then add a sail and a fan blowing the sail. Think how cool that would be!

  • What we really need is ships that extract plastic from the water and use that. Shipping routes might have to change a bit to actually go through the crap but there is far more than enough to power all ships in the world. It would be nice if they could simultaneously capture the CO2.

  • I'm impressed to see "funky" used in a non-ironic way. Got to be the first time this century.

  • The largest container ships [wikipedia.org] are 400m long by 59m wide. Their engines produce a max of about 75,000 kW of power. If you assume the engines normally operate at 80% peak generating capacity, that's 60,000 kW.

    If you covered the entire top of the ship with solar panels, that would be 400m*59m = 23,600 m^2 of solar panels (actually a bit less due to curvature at the bow and stern).

    How much power would the panels need to produce to replace the diesel engines? 60,000 kW / 23,600 m^2 = 2.5 kW/m^2, or 2500 W

    • sun directly overheat

      Not for a few billion years.

    • Duh! It's a CARGO SHIP! Meaning it's carrying lots and lots of CONTAINERS! We cover the top of each container with solar panels,so they collect solar energy. Then we stack the containers 50-60 high and...

      Oh, wait...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      We had a solution [wikipedia.org] for the cargo ship emissions years ago.

  • It's funky only if you've been oblivious the developments in the yachting world (esp. catamarans and French sail racing). State of the art design, state of the are materials, even state of the art propulsion equipment (the ideas are old but the implementation is SOTA).
    Also, see this for what it is: advertising for renewable energy and responsible environmental practices. While this is utterly impractical (currently) for a ship, the scale _is_ practical for a reasonably sized private dwelling.

  • Hydrogen fuel cells are impractical in land vehicles because even though they are lighter than batteries for the energy they store, they take up a lot of physical space. On the Ocean there's plenty of space and weight is more of an issue, so it works out better. Less weight means less volume below the waterline. This means it takes less energy and creates less drag to propel the boat.

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