With over 500 cargo ships per day, the English Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world, giving the South Coast important reasons to search for cleaner, greener ways to propel those ships. The University of Brighton is joining forces with academic and industry partners on projects currently aiming to lower fossil fuel usage at sea and maximise the eco-credentials of our local ports – major steps towards the global climate change challenge.
The UK government’s strategies Maritime 2050 and Ten Point Plan for the Green Industrial Revolution have shown the ambition and importance of accelerating testing and development of promising alternatives to traditional fuels. Brighton and Hove’s own commitments to greener energy options along the coast include not only the famous Rampion windfarm, but the port structures including re-certified eco-port at Shoreham, where hydrogen is helping ambitions for Affordable and Clean Energy and innovations at Newhaven Port in line with Sustainable Development Goals for Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. The University of Brighton’s Advanced Engineering Centre, with its unique equipment and expertise, has consultation and partnership projects that promise to drive these forward, reflecting the values and potential of the Clean Maritime Research Hub, a key member.
According to the Clean Maritime Research Hub, website “Maritime transport is the backbone of international trade with more than 80 per cent of the world’s goods transported by sea. With three per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions coming from the maritime sector, if left unchecked, current growth rates suggest that this could increase to 10 per cent by 2050.” The hub will initially run until 2027, providing technically, environmentally, socially and economically informed pathways to decarbonise the maritime sector.
The University of Brighton’s Advanced Engineering Centre has a history of heavy transport engine innovation on land with initiatives like Cryopower, and is able to provide the facilities and expertise that make it a vital partner in large-scale projects developing eco-considerate fuel and engine alternatives for cargo ships. The university’s experts have now joined forces with a number of academic institutions and industrial partners to investigate how hydrogen and ammonia could provide the answers to the fossil-fuel heavy business of propelling large marine cargo vessels.
Due in part to relatively low cost of storage of ammonia compared to hydrogen, ammonia has been identified as a likely alternative fuel. The full decarbonisation of commercial shipping however requires sustainable ammonia production with minimised energy demand and effective policy implementation. Marine engine producers are already developing compatible dual fuel systems. While these are currently, reliant on fossil pilot fuel to promote combustion, with unacceptable pollutants leading to air quality issues around ports, the next-generation, fully decarbonised solutions will be are safe and affordable, will overcome slow combustion and attain high thermal efficiency.
The ongoing MarinNH3 project has allowed Brighton to join Nottingham University in pursuing a programme aiming to fully decarbonise use of ammonia with minimised pollutants as well as overcoming the key technical, economic and social barriers to NH3 adoption. These include the chemical’s potential corrosiveness to some common engine metals, risks of leakage, and the needs for human health precautions such as ventilation of the engine space. Particular emphasis is placed on eliminating funnel emissions of NH3 and NOx while at the same time guaranteeing the vital engine efficiency.
This is being achieved through flexible, multidisciplinary research set around disruptive engine concepts delivering high thermal efficiency and negligible funnel pollutants. The team are testing economic and social impacts against the key competing decarbonisation solutions. Their research will also improve understanding of the impacts of ammonia handling on fuel bunkering, port infrastructure and operations, helping set out the requirements of future policies for implementation in harmony with other decarbonisation solutions in an aim to minimise end use energy demand and pollutants through innovative engines coupled to new fuelling and after-treatment systems.
In a project that tests three engine technologies with plans to implement these in harmony with other decarbonisation solutions, the University of Brighton leads on the theoretical and experimental analysis of the complex after-treatment chemistry, improving understanding of Selective Catalytic Reduction reductant interactions with ammonia and the potential of supplementary oxidation catalysis. The consortium has secured backing across major engine part manufacturers such as Rolls Royce and Dolphin-N2 and energy companies including Shell and BP, as well as the Maritime Coastguard Agency and Department for Transport. It is examining disruptive engine operating modes including dual fuel, retrofit jet ignition combustion capable of zero NOx and a disruptive split cycle engine design, providing very high thermal to overcome NH3 combustion limitations with experimental and computational studies coupled to life cycle analysis.
Through its unique facilities and research environment, Brighton also plays a vital role in the Test Engines to Accelerate Net Zero Shipping and Power Generation (TITANZ) project, which responds to the same intensified fundamental research around greener fuels and clean, high efficiency operating modes. The project plugs a gap in the testing facilities in the UK, which lacks large single cylinder engine facilities, restricting researchers to automotive scale experiments and simulations. In order to push towards Net Zero fuels, disruptive large engine technologies and policies the project seeks to establish a world-leading, megawatt scale decarbonised engine experimental facility, with two unique research engines strategically co-located as a new collaborative centre of excellence and nationally accessible asset leveraging existing infrastructure and expertise.
This complements Brighton’s recent ambitions with other partners for example in the Shipping, Hydrogen and Port Ecosystems UK (SHAPE) project which focused on Portsmouth Harbour and the hydrogen-based opportunities to reduce emissions and pollutants. Scalability, affordability and adaptability have been paramount to the adoption of low carbon fuel sources within the maritime sector and there has been extensive work to retain efficiency of large marine transporters but reduce their high contribution of CO2 emissions and air pollutants. The adoption of decentralised energy systems has offered the potential to support the necessary transition of ports and their operations to a net-zero carbon, climate positive future.
The project demonstrated a modular green hydrogen generation system within Portsmouth International Port (PIP) and delivered a decision support tool to enable port managers to determine the environmental and economic use cases for hydrogen generation and utilisation, determining the utilisation of a modular electrolyser within an active port. The team are now in consultation with Shoreham Port to discover new ways to tackle the challenges of fuel pollutants and move towards the region’s decarbonisation plan.