Feasibility study on hydrogen fuel systems onboard cruise ships

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

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Date

2024-06-10

Department

Major/Subject

Marine Technology

Mcode

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Mechanical Engineering (MEC)

Language

en

Pages

113+22

Series

Abstract

This thesis explores the feasibility of integrating hydrogen fuel systems into cruise ship design, responding to the maritime industry's urgent need for sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions. The primary focus is on assessing whether and how hydrogen can serve as a viable alternative fuel to traditional diesel and liquefied natural gas (LNG) systems. Employing a combination of literature review, scenario planning through the Delphi method, and a case study of a reference vessel provided by Meyer Turku, this research examines the technical, regulatory, and operational aspects of adopting hydrogen technologies into cruise ship design. The study compiles hydrogen's properties, system integration challenges, and safety considerations, comparing them against conventional fuels while evaluating the impact on ship design and to the vessel’s operational efficiency. The chemical and physical properties of hydrogen greatly affect its use as a marine fuel, such as energy density, storage requirements, light weight, and flammability. The study highlights the challenges of storing hydrogen in both compressed and liquid forms onboard. The energy density of conventional gas fuel, LNG, is 2,6 times higher than that of liquid cryogenic hydrogen and 4,9 time of gaseous hydrogen in 300 bar storage tanks. Therefore, it can be expected that same endurance capacities are near impossible to be achieved in 100% hydrogen storage, without sacrifices in vessel’s economical capacities, i.e., number of cabins or passenger experience activities. Utilization of gas blend systems or alternative power production systems also affects both the light weight and net volume of the vessel greatly. Use of alternative stationary power production could be used to decrease total weight born from different ship machinery subsystems significantly. While hydrogen technology is advancing, its technical maturity varies significantly across different applications and components. For hydrogen systems to be feasible on cruise ships, substantial advancements are needed, particularly in the areas of storage, safety, supply of fuel converters and system integration. Specific evaluation should be made for long range ship operations of large vessels, due to the low energy density of the fuel.

Description

Supervisor

Romanoff, Jani

Thesis advisor

Stenberg, Arttu

Keywords

hydrogen, energy storage, cruise ship design, fuel systems, Delphi, scenario planning

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Citation

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202406164400

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