Fuel cells are being installed in new ships at four shipyards. The first will be released in 2024. If it works, hybrid diesel-electric engines and solar-powered sailboats, which have acted as the first step toward maritime sustainability, may be phased out.
“Someone needs to be the pioneer,” Michael Bremen, sales director at Lürssen Yachts, says of an unidentified superyacht now under construction at the company’s German headquarters. Lürssen, which has built several of the world’s largest and most complex superyachts, won’t even say how long the vessel is. Bremen, though, praises the owner, who also wishes to stay unnamed, as someone who is excited about the future: “He’s clever about it.” He didn’t leap in without first assessing the situation.”
The use of hydrogen is fraught with difficulties: Simply keeping the highly combustible element in liquid and gaseous forms necessitates extremely huge, specifically equipped containers that might take up valuable interior space. Furthermore, waterside hydrogen fuelling facilities are few. Lürssen is overcoming these limits by employing methanol as the primary fuel source, which can be stored in standard tanks and transformed into hydrogen.
After the hydrogen is converted to energy by the fuel cell, it may be consumed or stored in lithium-ion battery banks. While the cell continues to create electricity, the clean energy powers electric engines. The fuel cell will continue to operate as long as it is supplied with hydrogen.
Since 2019, Lürssen and its partner, the Freudenberg Group, have been working on its fuel cell, with final testing set to begin this spring. Another significant advantage of this technique is that the cell “has no moving parts, therefore there is no noise or vibration,” according to Bremen.
Instead of powering the yacht’s primary propulsion, the fuel cell will operate the house load—primarily electricity and air conditioning—in blissful silence for 15 days or propel the boat at a sluggish, net-zero-emissions speed for 1,000 miles. Both of these innovations are crucial because they will allow the yacht to stay out of port for weeks or cruise into ecologically sensitive seas where only electric vessels are permitted.
Baglietto, an Italian shipyard, claims it is working on a fuel cell prototype that will be on show by the end of the year. The system may be placed on yachts that are 171 feet long or longer and are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2024 or early 2025. (Sanlorenzo hopes to unveil its own system around the same time; Feadship is also working on a fuel-cell system but hasn’t announced a launch date.)
Baglietto’s method harvests hydrogen straight from ocean water, and you may also use commercially generated hydrogen to fill its storage tanks. Its technology, like Lürssen’s, will power the home load while cruising at six to nine knots in silence. “Extending the range in zero-emissions mode is one of our key aims,” says Alessandro Balzi, director of Baglietto’s energy department. “It permits a boat to enter locations where diesel engines are restricted.”
Despite the fact that these technologies constitute a significant advancement in sustainable technology, no one anticipates a real zero-carbon boat for at least a decade. “Clean energy for the primary engines is not yet there,” says Tankoa CEO Vincenzo Poerio, one of the early users of hybrid diesel-electric engines in yachting. Hydrogen fuel cells will be an important part of the answer, but they will not be the entire solution—at least not for the time being. “Multiple systems will come together to meet our desire for clean energy—possibly even nuclear fusion power,” Poerio predicts. “Yacht owners are requesting designs today that can be switched out as those technologies improve over the next ten years.”
