Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Scalpaldr t1_iu1uwtf wrote

>"The 235-metre-long Shofu Maru will transport coal mainly from Australia, Indonesia, and North America as a dedicated vessel for Japan’s electric services company Tohoku Electric Power."

Well thank goodness the sail is there to reduce "GHG emissions by about 5-8%". What a strike for a greener future!

6

edweirdmuybridge OP t1_iu1wuru wrote

From my understanding, they chose coal because it has a relatively uniform density and less propensity to shift around. This is important during the development process because the sail totally changes the handling of the ship and they are trying to understand how to implement these safely. Hence coal. The optics aren’t perfect, but it is best to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

It is also worth noting that this ship is a retrofit and is being sailed by MOL, which is one of the largest shipping companies in the world. If the tests go well, we could see these deployed across much of their fleet so the 5-8% savings would be significant.

16

themagicbong t1_iu1z4gd wrote

Plus I thought I read that the theoretical savings can be much higher than 5%-8%, I thought I had read somewhere that it could be as high as 15-20% fuel savings, though that would require perfect circumstances at the high end, and of course there are kinks to work out like you mention with the handling. Either way, 5-8% is pretty substantial.

3

Alovebird t1_iu86w9s wrote

15-20% are normally quoted for specially designed ships that are still on paper, this is a retrofit of an existing cargo ship and for that it's a pretty big amount

1

Northwindlowlander t1_iu26on8 wrote

It's a big deal tbh. And it's also, importantly, a big deal that doesn't require a huge change in infrastruture and that can be retrofitted to existing ships. This is <exactly> the sort of technical improvement that we need to be chasing tbh.

9

SignorJC t1_iu2t9t1 wrote

5% is an absolutely massive improvement.

4