New age of sail
Spurred by emission curbs and fuel costs, Rolls- Royce is working on a clipper ship featuring a 54- metre sail augmented by bio- methane engines .
LONDON — Rolls- Royce Holdings Plc, best known for powering planes from Concorde to the Airbus superjumbo, is working on a modernday clipper ship as it bets on emissions curbs to jack up bunker- fuel costs and herald a new age of sail.
Cargo vessels are set for a design change embracing sleeker hulls and hybrid propulsion systems, according to Londonbased Rolls, which is helping to develop a ship featuring a 54- metre sail augmented by bio- methane engines and carrying 4,100 tonnes.
“We’re at the dawn of a transition,” said Oskar Levander, vice- president for innovation at Rolls’ marine unit, who predicts a switch to alternative fuels such as dimethyl ether and liquid natural gas, as well as “high- tech wind.”
Spurring the push are International Maritime Organization sulphur caps that are already compelling ship owners to switch to cleaner but pricier grades. Trimmer designs and innovative power systems could more than offset the extra cost with a potential 55 per cent efficiency gain, according to Diane Gilpin, project leader at Rolls partner B9 Shipping of Larne, Northern Ireland.
Plans for hybrid models hark back to an era of wind power that ended less than 150 years ago, when steamships finally supplanted the sailing vessels that had dominated cargo traffic for thousands of years dating back to ancient Egypt and beyond.
The B9 vessel will measure 99 metres long and derive primary power from a sail hoisted using an automated rig. Before construction begins the blueprint will be further refined with input from America’s Cup racing- yacht designer Rob Humphreys.
Rolls, whose stock has added 39 per cent this year on higher aircraft- engine sales, will provide a backup power plant based on its Bergen model that’s able to burn methane produced from municipal waste by another unit of B9 Energy Group. The sail and engine could also be used together for optimal efficiency.
Around 90 per cent of the world’s cargo fleet is propelled by bunker fuel, which while relatively cheap at about $ 550 per tonne is also one of the heaviest and dirtiest of crudeoil distillates, with a 3.5 per cent sulphur content contributing to about 84,000 deaths a year worldwide from marine emissions, according to a 2007 study led by James Corbett, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy in Delaware University.
Under the IMO rules, ships entering Emission Control Areas covering the English Channel, North and Baltic seas and most of the U. S. coast were compelled to switch to one per cent sulphur fuel on July 1, 2010, from an already stringent 1.5 per cent limit.
Ships in the same areas must move to 0.1 per cent fuel by Jan. 1 2015, and all oceangoing vessels will have to adopt 0.5 per cent sulphur by about 2020, according to stipulations from the United Nations body, a development which will prompt a switch to “a much more diverse fuel pallet,” according to Levander.
While the hybrid design increases capital costs, B9 says it will pay back in three to five years of a three- decade lifespan.
“Operational budgets are trumping build costs at the moment,” said Gilpin, adding that B9 is seeking $ 22 million in funding to put a ship in the water within two years. To help win backers, it’s offering to package orders with bio- fuel costs guaranteed by its sister unit.
Sail last dominated during the clipper- ship era of the mid1800s, when vessels averaging 30 kilometres an hour with a capacity of 1,350 tonnes transported high- value goods such as tea, spices and opium on Asian routes, as well as tens of thousands of people to the California and Australia gold rushes.
British and U. S. vessels such as the Cutty Sark and Rainbow easily outpaced steam rivals, and hybrid ships were also popular until the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal — which lacked a reliable prevailing wind — gave coal power a telling edge.
Sail held on in the form of socalled windjammers, which, while slower than the clippers, carried loads of as much as 7,000 tonnes in the case of Germany’s Preussen.
The ships operated on lowvalue routes until as recently as the Second World War, especially to ports lacking the coal and water required by steam models.
Efforts to introduce liquid gas- powered vessels are more advanced than the modern wind- based experiments, gaining early adopters among ferry companies in the sulphur- limitation zones.
Norway’s Nor Lines AS, which serves dozens of local ports and a handful of others in the North Sea and Baltic, has ordered two ships for delivery next year with LNG engines also built by RollsRoyce, having already switched much of its 16- vessel cargo fleet to low- sulphur marine- gas oil, chief executive Toralf Ekrheim said in an emailed response to questions.
The Stavanger- based company has options to take two more of the ships, which will entirely eliminate soot and cut output of carbon dioxide by 35 per cent and nitrogen oxide by 95 per cent, according to their Chinese manufacturer Tsuji Heavy Industries.
The model is an offshoot of Rolls’ Environship concept, which includes new bow designs and an integrated rudder and propeller that the company says could boost efficiency by eight per cent.