CUTTING CARBON

The University of Southampton is at the forefront of research into cleaner, smarter, and safer maritime practices.

The shipping industry is essential to the world economy as 90% of globally traded goods are transported by sea. Currently, this vital activity produces over 1,000 million tonnes of CO 2 every year, which amounts to around three per cent of all greenhouse emissions produced by human activity.

The United Nations International Maritime Organisation’s goal to reduce greenhouse emissions from international shipping by 50 per cent by 2050 presents a real and urgent challenge. At the COP26 climate conference, states declared their ambition and intent to support the establishment of green shipping corridors – zero-emission shipping routes between two ports – by signing the Clydebank Declaration. This demonstrates that a coalition of countries, including the UK, intend to be more ambitious in striving towards net-zero shipping.

The University of Southampton has longstanding research interests in how to make ships more efficient and the best approaches to zero-carbon shipping. Southampton has received grants and contracts in this area from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation (an independent global charity), European Commission, UK Ministry of Defence, and Government and Research Councils, totalling £7.4 million between 2000 and 2020.

The University’s capacity in this area continues to grow. Professor Stephen Turnock, Head of Department, Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering explained: “Our investment in facilities like the 138-metre Boldrewood tank, expertise in system modelling, electrochemistry, cryogenic fuels, and materials science amongst others, as well as those of our wider Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute community, are allowing Southampton to support the urgent transition process required in ship design and port infrastructure.”

Centre for Maritime Futures

The Centre for Maritime Futures (CMF) sits at the heart of Southampton’s work in decarbonisation and related areas, and brings together three key University institutes: the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI), the Centre for Machine Intelligence and The Alan Turing Institute.

The CMF is a collective of people, facilities and external stakeholders in maritime and digital technologies. The result of a gift from Shell Shipping and Maritime of £1.5 million to the University in 2019, the Centre brings together university and industry partners to transform the energy shipping industry to be safer, cleaner, and more efficient.

Professor Dominic Hudson, Shell Professor in Ship Efficiency, said “Our experts at the University, with collaborators at Shell, have been working together to develop groundbreaking digital and technological advances to significantly reduce the carbon footprint for future international shipping. As our work has powered forward, so has the global drive to improve carbon emissions and, in the long-term, become a net zero emissions industry.”

Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition

Led by the SMMI, in partnership with the Centre for Maritime Futures, a multidisciplinary team of Southampton researchers worked on three rounds of projects from the Department of Transport’s first Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition (CMDC) to accelerate the decarbonisation of the maritime industries.

That competition, managed by Innovate UK, is investing £20 million in projects across the UK, to address the urgent need to decarbonise the global maritime network. It is part of the government’s Ten Point Plan to position the UK at the forefront of green technologies. The programme supports 55 projects across the UK, all working on the research, design, and development of zero-emission technology and infrastructure solutions to accelerate decarbonisation in the maritime sector.

“Our involvement in many of the Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition projects is a testament to Southampton’s contribution to the global push for a greener maritime industry,” said Dominic. “In total, we have now been involved with projects worth £1.8 million to the University.”

Zero-carbon base load power for large ships

Cruise ships are floating cities with major basepower requirements at sea and in-port. Known as the ‘hotel-load’, this vital function produces electricity for all the ships’ non-propulsion needs. These include heating, ventilation, airconditioning, and waste processing. However, powering these demands emits pollutants, particularly over port towns and cities when the ships are docked.

The challenge is to replace the hydrocarbonfuelled generators that typically perform this function on large cruise ships. To address this the Southampton-based cruise ship owner, Carnival UK, and trading company, Lloyd’s Register, joined forces with Shell, Ceres Power, an innovative fuel-cell company, and the SMMI, teamed up to establish the feasibility of using a cleaner alternative through the first round of CMDC funding.

The team looked at innovative clean technology that could replace the old generators with new solid-oxide fuel cells and batteries in future ship designs and builds. The study successfully demonstrated a reduction in carbon emissions of up to 36% at sea, while substantially reducing pollutant oxides of Nitrogen and eliminating particle pollution.

Ammonia marine propulsion system

The SMMI has partnered with marine robotics company Ocean Infinity (OI), in Southampton, along with Shell the University of Oxford, and the University of Oxford spin-out, Oxford Green Innotech.

This consortium is developing a fully electric, zero-emissions system for use on OI’s growing fleet of uncrewed ships.

The Southampton team’s contribution has been to develop a fully instrumented, modelscale, container ship to assess the ships’ power demand when operating in waves. They then completed a programme of tests in the towing tank. They also used the Institute of Sound and Vibrations Research’s (ISVR) large, six degrees of freedom, motion platform.

The Ammonia-Marine-Propulsion technology coming out of this collaboration has the potential to be part of a zero-carbon coastal highway for the UK.

Feasibility of ultra-long-endurance hydrogen-powered uncrewed surface vessels

The Southampton team is also collaborating with start-up Acua Ocean, whose Chief Operating Officer, Mike Tinmouth, is a Southampton alumnus, to develop autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicles. They are long-endurance, liquid-hydrogen-powered,

uncrewed, guard vessels that monitor and protect the marine environment. These offer a cost-effective means of protecting and managing oceans and waterways.

Acua is testing the feasibility of their patentpending technology designs with scaled models in the University’s towing tank.

The SMMI’s work with Acua Ocean (AO) continues through the second round of CMDC projects. Together they aim to demonstrate the capability of a commercial Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) system which could undertake maintenance and decrease downtime on offshore infrastructure.

This includes a feasibility study, in the form of a wave tank test, of the small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) hydrogen-powered vessel designed in the first project. This would demonstrate the capability of AO’s vessels and enable them and their end customers to accelerate the development of an ROV deployment system from these small waterplanes.

Further work with Acua Ocean is ongoing through the third round of CMDC funding. This will involve creating a safe port-side hydrogen supply system for the hydrogen-powered vessel and looking more widely at the feasibility of moving freight from land to sea and creating zero-carbon coastal highways.

Powering ships of the future with wind

Ships of the future could once again be powered by wind if a project funded in CMDC3, which retrofits large vessels with ultramodern wing-sails, wind assisted sail technology, is successful..

The research team intends to create new software tools which accurately predict how modern vessels perform on the ocean when fitted with FastRig wing-sails, developed by UK company Smart Green Shipping.

The Lead scientist Dr Joseph Banks, from SMMI, explained, “Ships powered by wind are obviously nothing new – but almost every large vessel operating today is powered by fossil fuels, leaving a lasting mark on the environment. While new wind-assist technologies are being developed, many are not ready for market and their predicted fuel savings have not been independently verified at sea, which is why research projects like this are so important.”

As part of the programme, scientists will test the impact of a retractable 20-metrehigh FastRig wing-sail retrofitted on the commercial ship the Pacific Grebe – a British 105-metre vessel. Researchers will investigate the interactions between the wing-sails and the ship hydrodynamics enabling accurate predictions of vessel performance. This will require innovative numerical simulations backed up by experiments conducted in Southampton’s 138-metre Boldrewood towing tank and RJ Mitchell wind tunnel.

Looking ahead

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United Nations Agency with responsibility for marine and maritime policy, is likely to increase its ambition for greater and faster cuts in shipping emissions at its Marine Environment Protection Committee meeting (MEPC) in July this year. This will add further urgency for the shipping industry to reduce its emissions and seek innovative solutions and technology to improve efficiency and switch to new fuels.

The CMDC projects are feasibility projects. Dominic explained: “We are now working on the next steps, publishing the results of the trials and exploring potential largerscale projects that optimise the learning achieved and look at integrating the tested technologies as a closer step to net zero.”

The University is looking to build on its critical mass of expertise and facilities to address some of the critical challenges facing the sector, especially those requiring a wholesystems approach. With the development of major initiatives in the area such as the Solent Freeport, and the Solent Cluster – there is a unique opportunity to position the region as the future of clean, green maritime.

Find out more www.southampton.ac.uk/ engineering/research/centres/ centre-for-maritime-futures.page

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF MARITIME RESEARCH

Southampton’s institutes, partnerships and project successes are fuelling the future of maritime research by attracting and supporting the next generation of researchers into marine decarbonisation.

Investigation of novel powertrains for zero-emissions shipping fuels

The SMMI and CMF welcomed a new PhD student and researcher, Panos Manias, at the end of 2022. Having completed his degree in Mechanical Engineering at Southampton, including an internship working on an innovative liquid Hydrogen carrier that was supported by Shell, Panos worked on the first round of Clean Maritime Demonstrator projects before registering for a PhD.

Panos will continue to develop technical modelling capability for future fuel, machinery and propulsion options for large vessels.

Dynamic Energy System Modelling to Assess Viable Zero-Emission Shipping Solutions

Shell is progressing with three large-scale demonstrations of fuel cell technologies onboard ships, after the potential indicated in the first three Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition projects and their investigations. The dynamic energy model for shipboard power consumption developed by Southampton PhD student Charlie McKinlay, supported by the CMF, helped underpin these CMDC projects.

Charlie’s research has developed dynamic energy models using data gathered during a ship’s operation to explore decarbonisation strategies for long-distance merchant shipping. The model predicts the size of key propulsion components, such as fuel cells, battery storage and fuel tanks for different future fuels and scenarios, in this case for one of Shell’s large Liquefied Natural Gas Carriers.

Methane capture using Metal Organic Frameworks

Supported by the Centre for Maritime Futures, the University will also be starting a new PhD project in 2023 looking at the potential for Methane capture using Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) in a collaboration between the Schools of Chemistry and Engineering.

Methane has a much higher global warming potential than Carbon Dioxide, so it is important to look at innovative ways to reduce the small Methane ‘slip’, unburnt Methane passing through the engine, from gas-powered engines used in some ships.