Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) recently published a report focusing on the environmental benefits of fully battery powered ships when compared to marine diesel vessels.
Specifically, the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering of University of Strathclyde along with Korea Maritime and Ocean University and Harbin Institute of Technology collaborated and conducted a comparative analysis of marine diesel and electricity.
The participants of the research investigated the benefits of using a battery system on a roll on/roll off (ro-ro) passenger ship which was originally fitted with a diesel engine engaged in Korean coastal service.
At first, collaborators collected the operating profiles of the case ship, for instance speed, output, operation time and the configuration of the diesel propulsion system.
Then, the full battery propulsion system, in place of the diesel system, was modeled and simulated on a power simulation software (PSIM) platform to verify the adequacy of the proposed battery propulsion system.
What is more, the life cycle assessment method was applied to comprehensively compare the environmental footprint of the diesel-mechanical and fully battery-powered vessels.
For the records, electrical propulsion with battery systems have been recognized as one of the most credible options to achieve decarbonization in the marine industry, as via charging the battery from the coastal power grid may achieve zero emissions during sailing.
Although, maritime industry often assumes that battery operation contributes to zero emissions, this may be true if they limit their scope to within the ship operation stage, as the paper argued.
According to the research:
The benefits of using a battery driven propulsion with the significant decrease of the GWP by 35.7%, the AP by 77.6%, the EP by 87.8% and the POCP by 77.2%, compared to the conventional diesel mechanical propulsion. Nevertheless, it has been found that battery applications are currently unable to achieve the 50% GWP reduction target under the present electricity mix of South Korea.
There were also identified vital technological and operational factors that affect the emissions in the process of ‘Well to Propeller’.
Namely, not only emissions associated with the onboard use, but also emissions associated with production of these fuels and electricity based on locations and source of energy and emissions associated with transport of these fuels based on transport means and locations of ports and refineries.
It was also found that the current practices for maritime environmental assessment might have been misguided regarding cleaner shipping.
You may explore the report herebelow:
