Green Hydrogen Produced By Roving Fleets Of Shadow Ships

[Caribbeans]

Green Hydrogen Produced By Roving Fleets Of Shadow Ships

Tina Casey | CleanTechnica | Aug 19, 2024

File this one under N for Now We’ve Seen Everything. A UK startup is planning to launch a fleet of futuristic sailboats equipped with electrolysis systems to produce green hydrogen fuel on-the-go. If that sounds a bit wacky, consider that the target markets are superyachts in need of clean fuel, along with islands, coastal communities, and port facilities where land for industrial development is scarce and conventional fuels are expensive.

Green Hydrogen Produced By Yachts: Not So Crazy After All

The startup behind the green hydrogen venture is DRIFT Energy. Oddball as it sounds, the basic pieces of the puzzle are in place. Green hydrogen is a new but rapidly maturing industry, the idea being to jolt hydrogen loose from water in an electrolysis system instead of extracting it from natural gas or coal. Hydrogen can be burned in a internal combustion engine or deployed to power zero emission fuel cells, which are already making an appearance in the high tech world of yacht racing.

Electrolysis systems are scalable and transportable, so it’s not much of a stretch to see them installed on a ship. DRIFT plans to run its electrolysis systems on electricity generated by underwater hydrogenerators. Turbines of this sort are in use today to provide on-board electricity for yachts and other vessels rather than relying on diesel generators.

Water is the final piece of the puzzle, and water is all around a sailing ship. Conventional electrolysis systems rely on purified water, but water purification systems are commonplace on board ships at sea. In addition, researchers are working on new electrolysis systems that can produce green hydrogen from seawater without the expense of pretreatment (see more clean H2 background here)...more
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/08/19/green-hydrogen-produced-by-roving-fleets-of-shadow-ships/

2/3rds of our earth is salt water. Seawater Electrolysis: the Next BIG Thing

https://www.horizoneducational.com/salt-water-fuel-cell-science-kit/p1225

[YoshidaYui]

1. get one big enough and we can get rid of gasoline boat engines

use the OCEAN itself to power a boat or even submersible .. wow.. this should not be called green energy, since its in the ocean call it BLUE energy!

[Caribbeans]

2. Done

[YoshidaYui]

5. Sugoi

驚く ほど (odoroku hodo)

[Think. Again.]

3. This sounds great!

I remember reading years ago about an experimental Hydrogen plant that Japan had built on an unused ocean oil rig using both wind and solar to power the electrolyzers that were continuously splitting and collecting the H2 and oxygen from the ocean water.

[Attilatheblond]

4. Interesting, and I guess one must dangle the carrot in front of wealthy yachts

but, I dream of these mobile energy producing dream boats being deployed off islands and coastal areas that suffer from infrastructure failures due to more violent and more frequent storm.

[duncang]

7. I saw a video of a guy

Who made a homemade system with solar power to charge batteries and make hydrogen to run his car. But there’s also manufactured ones that store hydrogen for use during winter months.

[NNadir]

8. Ah, "Green" Hydrogen, the big lie again. Thus spake Exxon...

Exxon rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen:

I'm sorry to report that fossil fuel marketing, no matter how persistent, will not overturn the laws of thermodynamics. They are inviolable and immune to marketing efforts.

The Rube Goldberg nonsense is just that, nonsense,

A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.