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MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

Future Low-Emission Passenger Ships

Alternative title: Fremtidige lavutslipp passasjerskip

Awarded: NOK 9.9 mill.

LowPass is a collaborative project between Fosen Design&Solutions, Color Line, SINTEF and NTNU. The aim is to develop new concepts and technological solutions to reduce the environmental footprint of passenger ships. Specifically, the project will analyse the feasibility of energy self-sufficient hotel facilities for such ships. The passenger ship industry represents an energy-intensive part of the shipping sector and is associated with emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other air pollutants. Hence, the shipping industry is facing increasing demands to reduce its environmental footprint. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) thus has adopted a strategy to reduce the total annual GHG emissions from ships by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008. In Norway, the Parliament (Stortinget) has decreed that the World Heritage Fjords Geirangerfjorden and Nærøyfjorden shall be free from cruise and ferry emissions no later than 2026. While there has been a lot of focus in the maritime industry to develop low-emission propulsion systems, less efforts have been put into the development of more energy-efficient hotel operations. For passenger ships, up to 40% of the total energy consumption can be attributed to the hotel facilities of the ships. The focus of LowPass is to develop a novel system methodology for an optimised design of the hotel energy system, based on input from the primary propulsion system and ambient conditions. Innovative concepts such as integrated heat pumps, thermal energy storage, and smart thermal grids will be evaluated. The aim is increased utilization of waste heat and optimization of the heating and cooling systems on board the ships. Existing and innovative technologies and their integration into the ships' energy system will be tested through dynamic modelling. Results will be validated against real-life data from passenger ships in operation. The ambition of the project is to reduce both the total energy consumption and the net environmental footprint of passenger ships. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the project research work in 2021 has been very limited. The pandemic has had a severe impact on the operation of passenger ships, resulting in that the ships to be studied in the project, Color Magic and Color Fantasy, resumed sailings in June 2021 after having temporarily been docked for several months. Due to the logistics and current resource situation on board the ships, however, it has been difficult to perform the planned project work. The current ambition and plan is to restart the project research work in 2022.

Every other ship built in Norway is a passenger ship and Norway is a major global supplier of environment-friendly ship designs and technologies. For example, the world's largest plug-in hybrid ship was designed by Fosen Design & Solutions, built at a Norwegian yard and had 18 Norwegian equipment suppliers. Although the passenger ship industry is an important value creator in Norway, there are challenges related to reducing the ship's energy demand and emissions to comply with current and future regulations. To remain competitive in the passenger ship industry, with its currently wide-ranging technological changes, ship designers and operators need to have the expertise to exploit emerging technologies and to design and implement innovative concepts for reducing the environmental footprint. Much effort have been put on developing low-emission propulsion systems, while less focus has been directed towards the hotel facility systems, which for passenger ships can constitute up to 40% of the total energy demand. There is a strong need for R&D activities related to a more integrated approach when designing the complex hotel energy systems on board and to develop energy-saving technologies that are novel to the maritime industry. It is also of primary importance to predict the actual energy consumption, analyse possible ways to reduce it and maximise the use of waste heat. These R&D needs will be addressed in LowPass, through the development of a novel design methodology and the evaluation of innovative concepts, such as integrated heat pumps using natural refrigerants and smart thermal grids including thermal energy storages. The methodology will be based on dynamic modelling of existing and innovative technologies and their integration into the ship's energy system, together with a system performance evaluation based on novel KPIs. The ambition is to evaulate the feasibility of an energy self-sufficient, zero-emission hotel operation on future passenger ships.

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Funding scheme:

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2