The Suiso Frontier, built by Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI), arrived on Friday from Kobe, in southern Japan, following a longer trip than the expected 16 days as the owners sought to avoid bad weather and rough seas, said a spokesperson for the venture, called the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC).

Led by KHI, HESC is a A$500 million ($360 million) project backed by the Japanese and Australian governments as a way to switch to cleaner energy and cut carbon emissions.

Hydrogen, seen as a path to decarbonizing industries that rely on coal, gas and oil, is key to Japan’s goal to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Australia aims to become a major exporter of the fuel.

Last year, the project started extracting hydrogen from brown coal at a 70 kg a day demonstration plant in the Latrobe Valley in the state of Victoria, about 135 km (84 miles) east of Melbourne, where brown coal mines have long fuelled some of Australia’s most polluting power stations.

The hydrogen is produced by reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high heat and pressure in a process that also yields carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is then trucked to a port site where it is cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius (minus 423 Fahrenheit), liquefying it for export.

If the partners eventually scale the project up to 225,000 tonnes a year, they plan to make carbon-neutral hydrogen by burying the carbon dioxide released in the process under the seabed offshore Victoria.

Partners in the Australian side of the project include Japan’s Electric Power Development Co (J-Power), Iwatani Corp, Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp and Australia’s AGL Energy Ltd, whose mine is supplying the brown coal.

($1 = 1.3906 Australian dollars)

Source: www.marinelink.com

Image: www.pexels.com

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The project demonstrates that the technology is now mature for using hydrogen (H2) as an energy carrier, Kongsberg said.

“With a verified and tested hydrogen-based propulsion system, we take the next step in zero-emission solutions at sea. This project is another example of our world-leading Norwegian maritime cluster succeeding when we face the most demanding technological challenges,” says Geir Håøy, President of Kongsberg.

The program is the third and final part of the EU-funded project “HySeas” which has been running since 2013 to prepare and demonstrate a scalable hydrogen system for ships and ferries. Kongsberg has been the technical lead of the project, which has involved participants from Scotland, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and England.

In this final stage, Kongsberg has built a full-scale electric propulsion system based on hydrogen-powered fuel cells at Ågotnes outside Bergen.

H₂-powered RoPax ferry
The system will now undertake a 4-month testing program for validation purposes with the aim of verifying the final design for an H₂-powered RoPax ferry. The drivetrain testing is intended to demonstrate the ease with which H₂ fuel cells can be successfully integrated with a proven marine hybrid electric drive system, the Norwegian maritime tech company said.

“The world looks to Norway for green and sustainable solutions at sea. What KONGSBERG and its partners have succeeded in achieving with this project is yet another proof of the internationally leading competence in the Norwegian maritime cluster. Now we have both taken the next step for solutions in Norway, and the next step for the Norwegian maritime industry to succeed in exporting hydrogen-based technology and solutions Internationally,” says Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Jan Christian Vestre.

According to Kongsberg, the testing mirrors the operational loads which would be experienced by a vessel on a route between Kirkwall and Shapinsay in Orkney. It will confirm safe operation and power and fuel capacity requirements, together with other valuable information to feed back to the vessel design team at Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) in Scotland. CMAL plans to complete the design in March 2022. Hydrogen fuel will be generated through wind power at the ferry port.

“If we are to succeed with hydrogen investment in Norway, both to reduce national emissions and create new, green and sustainable jobs, we are dependent on being able to show complete pilots on a full scale. This means that the next step will be to show the technology in operation, and then quickly put in place the surrounding infrastructure. Orkney will be the first practical usage of this technology while the Norwegian maritime cluster has the opportunity develop our own pilots and projects here in Norway,” says Egil Haugsdal, CEO of Kongsberg Maritime.

The full scale HySeas III test was launched at the Kongsberg facility in Ågotnes, Norway on December 1, 2021.

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