Abstract
PEM Fuel Cells are considered among the most promising technologies for hydrogen utilization in both stationary and automotive applications. The number of FC installations on board ships – alone or in hybrid configuration with batteries – is increasing significantly, although international regulations that drive their installation are still missing. In this scenario, the project TecBia aims to identify a dedicated test protocol and the best commercial PEMFC technology for marine applications, assessing the integration of a 140 kW PEMFC system on the Zero Emission Ultimate Ship (ZEUS) vessel. The system design and technology provider has been chosen after a technical comparison based on a dedicated experimental campaign. The experimental campaign had two goals: (i) analyse the performance of the different PEMFC systems to define the best characteristics for maritime applications; (ii) verify the compliance with naval requirements with reference to current and future standards. The present study shows the resulting test protocol for FC Systems (FCS) for maritime applications, defined starting from the existing international regulations on FCS installations and on naval environment requirements; the results of its application on the commercial system chosen for the installation on ZEUS are reported.
Highlights
The use of alternative fuels on-board ships has become crucial to decrease navigation’s strong impact on the environment, as issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) [1,2], and to follow the recent restrictions on Green House Gases (GHG) emissions [3]
The present study shows the resulting test protocol for FC Systems (FCS) for maritime applications, defined starting from the existing international regulations on FCS installations and on naval environment requirements; the results of its application on the commercial system chosen for the installation on Zero Emission Ultimate Ship (ZEUS) are reported
According to [31], the efficiency is calculated based on the Higher Heating Value (HHV) of hydrogen, and the calculation requires the following measures: x Hydrogen inlet flow rate x Heat supplied/absorbed externally x Flow rate of the oxidant entering the system x Electrical power absorbed by auxiliaries x Electrical power generated by the system x The efficiency test should be conducted in accordance with the following procedure: x Start the system and require a constant power x Verify that the system operates in stable conditions, i.e., within the limits of variability imposed by the [31] regulation x Measure the parameters necessary for the calculation of efficiency for no less than 1 hour
Summary
The use of alternative fuels on-board ships has become crucial to decrease navigation’s strong impact on the environment, as issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) [1,2], and to follow the recent restrictions on Green House Gases (GHG) emissions [3] In this context, hydrogen is one of the most promising fuels for marine applications [4][5], and Polymeric Electrolyte Membrane FC (PEMFC) can be a promising technology to be employed for propulsion [6,7,8,9,10,11,12], coupled with batteries, and evaluating the best hydrogen storage technology, to increase the practicable navigation distance [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21].
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