Guest Bio
Beau Berthelot is vice president of business development and director of government affairs at Maritime Partners, a leading provider of maritime assets, vessel leasing solutions and construction financing.
Episode Summary
Host Vic Marinich is joined by Beau Berthelot is vice president of business development and director of government affairs at Maritime Partners, to discuss his company’s Hydrogen One tugboat project and its use of methanol-to-hydrogen fuel generation technology.
Main Points
- Maritime Partners surveyed the industry and identified a lot of challenges with a lot of different types of alternative fuels and settled on methanol-to-hydrogen generation technology. This solution seemed to be the best fit based on what was currently available for the majority of our customer base. (1:58)
- There are a tremendous amount of industrial complexes along major U.S. waterways with at least three major methanol production facilities. So there is access and we have the ability to transport. (3:22)
- The Hydrogen One carries about 30,000 usable gallons of methanol. There is also deionized water on board that is mixed with methanol at a ratio of 2:1 and then put into the hydrogen generator. It is basically a steam reformation process that creates a gas when heated, and then the hydrogen is extracted and passed through a purifier. It flows into buffer tanks at low pressure and then those buffer tanks feed the fuel cells, which in turn send power to batteries for energy storage or to the electric motors to power the vessel. (4:50)
- In the production of energy from the fuel cells, we also have a system that captures and condenses and recirculates the water back through to the holding tank for reuse. This allows us to use a smaller water tank. (5:40)
- With the fuel cell system, the boat can carry more hydrogen in the form of methanol and water. The hydrogen generator has an 83% efficiency rating and a fuel cell has anywhere between 50 to 55% efficiency. When those two are combined, the result is higher efficiency than a traditional diesel engine. (9:25)
- Methanol is stable at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature so there is no need for any kind of conditioning with the liquid fuel. The hydrogen is produced on demand. Compared to a comparable 2000-horsepower diesel boat, the Hydrogen One achieves a 99% reduction in EPA regulation emissions. There are no moving parts to the fuel cell so no noise is generated by the boat’s power system. (10:28)
- Hydrogen power will be more expensive than diesel, but the costs are getting lower and will continue to drop in the future. Methanol is already available and the technology will become more efficient and cheaper to manufacture. We believe that we can get it down over time to be within 20% of the cost of an equivalent Tier 4 diesel tugboat. (15:40)
- One of the challenges to wider adoption of hydrogen is fuel cell technology is not scaled yet. But we are starting to see large ships built with the methanol-to-hydrogen technology. In time, hydrogen to fuel cell technology is going to replace auxiliary power generation and not main propulsion on larger vessels. (20:00)
- Hydrogen storage will still be a challenge. How can we store the fuel that is not liquid at ambient pressure, atmosphere ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure? (21:08)
Links
Learn more about Hydrogen One: https://pacmar.com/article/hydrogen-one-a-maritime-milestone/
Read more from the International Energy Agency about the current state of hydrogen adoption: https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/hydrogen
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