Evaluating the potential of fuel cells for the dredging industry
Type:
Presented during:
CEDA Dredging Days 2024
Authors:
B.T.W. Mestemaker and L. van Biert
Abstract
Dredging has a critical role in maintaining and expanding waterways, ports, and coastal areas. Dredging vessels are currently powered by traditional fossil-fuelled combustion engines. This leads to significant environmental challenges, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution and noise pollution. This has adverse effects on the air and water quality and thus on the health of humans living in the area, the fauna and the flora in the vicinity, which is particularly important as dredging works often occur near (highly) polluted areas and fragile ecosystems. Fuel cells are gaining traction in the maritime industry as a promising alternative for combustion engines. Fuel cells generate electric power through an electrochemical reaction instead of combustion, resulting in a higher fuel efficiency and less harmful emissions, noise pollution and vibrations. This makes fuel cells a potential solution to address the environmental challenges the dredging sector is facing already now and in the coming years. There are several types of fuel cells that show promise for use in the maritime sector. However challenges remain, especially for applications with high power and energy density requirements such as dredging vessels. The highly dynamic load of the dredging operation cannot be handled by fuel cells directly, thus additional energy storage is required. The power and energy content of the storage depends on the fuel cell type and the requirements of the dredging operation. This paper discusses which fuel cell types are the most suitable for the dredging application in combination with the expected future fuels. The vessels' drive system design will also be examined including an analysis of the expected energy storage size. In addition, the fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful emissions will be evaluated.
Keywords: Fuel cells, maritime energy transition, alternative fuels, dynamic loading