The EU’s Research and Innovation program Horizon 2020 is
awarding a grant to the ShipFC project to pursue the installation of the first
ammonia-power fuel cell on an operating vessel. The project which is being run
by a consortium of 14 European companies and institutions, plans to install the
fuel system on an offshore vessel in 2023 to demonstrate the potential of the
technology and will also perform studies on other types of vessel to illustrate
the ability to transfer the technology to other segments of the shipping industry.
Being led by the Norwegian cluster organization NCE Maritime
CleanTech, the ShipFC project was awarded an approximately $12 million grant
under the EU’s Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU). The goal is
also to ensure that a large fuel cell can deliver total electric power to
shipboard systems safely and effectively.
In the first phase of the project, the partners are seeking
to scale up a 100-kilowatt fuel cell to generate 2 megawatts. The fuel cell is
being tested on land in a parallel project and development and construction
will be undertaken by Prototech. Testing will be executed at the Sustainable
Energy Norwegian Catapult Centre with the ship ammonia system being supplied by
Wärtsilä.
The goal is to install in late 2023 the ammonia fuel cell
system aboard the Viking Energy, which is owned and operated by Eidesvik and on
contract to energy major Equinor. With the large 2MW ammonia fuel cell
retrofitted, the vessel will operate on the clean fuel for up to 3,000 hours
annually and will demonstrate the possibility of operating long-range
zero-emission voyages with high power on larger ships. Built in 2003, the
Viking Energy is a 6,000 DWT vessel with a length of 311 feet.
Another part of the ShipFC project will perform studies on
three other vessel types, including an offshore construction vessel and two
cargo vessel types, to illustrate the ability to transfer this technology to
other segments of the shipping industry.
The project represents the latest stage in the long-running
collaboration between Equinor, Eidesvik, and Wärtsilä. The three companies
successfully collaborated on several environmental and cleantech projects over
the years. Viking Energy was the first LNG powered ocean-going vessel in 2003,
and Eidesvik and Wärtsilä also collaborated on the 2009-built Viking Lady,
another LNG-fueled vessel that was fitted with fuel cells and marine batteries.