High horsepower methanol vessel retrofit

The maritime industry's path to decarbonisation represents a significant challenge due to the industry's long-standing reliance on fossil fuels. It requires a fundamental transformation in fuel types, production, distribution, and infrastructure, as well as overcoming technical, economic, and regulatory barriers.

Alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia offer potential solutions, but their adoption requires substantial changes to ship designs, propulsion systems, supply chains, infrastructure and operational practices. As such, their deployment at scale is unlikely to be seen this decade, the need to progress decarbonisation in the maritime sector in the short term is essential to meet our global climate needs. The use of low carbon intensity methanol as an alternative fuel overcomes many of these challenges.

Unlike ammonia or hydrogen, methanol is a liquid at standard ambient conditions. This not only makes transportation and storage simpler, but its properties also allow for use in existing marine internal combustion engines with relatively minor modifications. This unlocks the potential for retrofit deployment ensuring decarbonisation is not just limited to new builds. One of the major challenges associated with hydrogen and ammonia deployment at sea is the scale of infrastructure development required to support their use. Methanol as a marine fuel can utilise decades of infrastructure development by the legacy oil and gas industries. Swapping out grey methanol for lower carbon intensity grades allows this infrastructure to be repurposed with minimal investment or development. This will enable rapid scaling of bunkering capacity ensuring meaningful decarbonisation can be achieved this decade.

This project brings together the proven world class power systems capabilities of Cummins, with the platform provided by the Ocean Infinity Armada fleet. The port of Aberdeen is a leading UK port perfectly positioned to serve the rapidly growing offshore wind industry. Proman is a long-standing global leader in methanol production and a pioneer in the development and transition to ultra-low carbon methanol production.

The project will develop and deploy a UK designed and built methanol conversion kit for a high horsepower marine internal combustion engine on a 78m state of the art battery hybrid offshore services vessel operating in the North Sea. In doing so the UK will gain an important foothold in enabling the transition to cleaner maritime fuels. This project is targeting a reduction in CO2 emissions of 50% for offshore operations with NOx, SOx and PM at levels considerably below that developed with conventional fuel.