Transition to hydrogen powered ocean-going and short-sea shipping with enabling retrofit technologies (TransShip)

This project aims to research the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen powered ocean-going and short-sea shipping vessels as a retrofit solution on existing vessels, which, combined with innovative energy saving devices, will contribute to the zero-emission, clean shipping future goal set out by the UK Government in the Maritime2050 route map plan. The project consortium brings together a strong workforce from both academia and industry with a passion and knowledge to develop the proposed technology by first reviewing the technical and economic feasibility of retrofittable hydrogen-powered propulsion. The project addresses a multitude of challenges to ensure the feasibility study covers all aspects of the proposed technology such as technical, economic, safety and legislative challenges that must be considered for a rigorous and diligent feasibility study.

The project consortium targets the integration of the enabling technologies for ship application. Innovations in four key areas will be investigated, including onboard hydrogen storage, energy saving solutions for hydrogen powered ship, optimised powertrain for hydrogen ship and multi-chemistry battery system for peak lopping.

The feasibility review of retrofittable hydrogen-powered propulsion combined with novel energy saving devices will be based on a target vessel selected in the project and made available for research, where data collection such as general arrangement, propulsion system and powering information will be collected to form a database for the following research. The hydrogen onboard storage solutions will be reviewed with the aim to formulise the best solution for safe, functional, and economical retrofit of hydrogen powered propulsion. In addition, the impact of introducing energy saving devices to hydrogen powered ships will be investigated to reduce the energy demand, to smooth the shaft power in various operating conditions and sea states, to lower the bar for hydrogen storage and powering and to finally enable a hydrogen compatible powertrain. The vessel powertrain with then be designed, analysed and optimised, where CapEx and OpEx costs for the owner operator will be forecasted and risks estimated such as critical capability gaps. The detailed design for the target vessel selected in the initial data collection will be conducted with the aim to explore the feasibility of the developed technology as a retrofittable solution with particular focus on hydrodynamic, hydrostatic and structural requirements. Lastly, testing validation and demonstration of the proposed technologies will be conducted at the Kelvin Hydrodynamics Laboratory (KHL), University of Strathclyde, and the Centre for Future Clean Mobility, University of Exeter.