Actively helping to shape the Maritime Energy Transition
MDT is meeting the challenge of banishing fossil fuels from shipping
By signing the Paris
climate treaty, 195 countries agreed on a target of carbon neutrality by 2050.
MDT endorses the resolutions of the United Nations Climate Change Conference
and is actively helping to gradually replace fossil fuels in shipping with
climate-neutral forms of energy. In this context, MDT coined the term ‘Maritime
Energy Transition’, which has since become firmly established
in politics and society.
Support has been forthcoming from the German
government: in spring 2017, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and
Energy launched ‘Energy Transition in the Transport Sector:
Sector Coupling through the Use of Electricity-Based Fuels’, a
funding initiative explicitly aimed at promoting maritime technologies. “We played
a key role in developing this concept and intend to apply for grants too,” Adrian
Hennek, Head of Public Affairs, explains.
Emission reduction with LNG
A project funded by
the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) shows what
implementation of the Maritime Energy Transition might look like in practice.
The Wessels Reederei shipyard based in Haren, Germany, has modified the first
container ship in the world to run on LNG. MAN PrimeServ converted the main
engine from an 8L48/60 to a 51/60DF.
This enabled the ‘Wes Amelie’ to cut its
SOx emissions by nearly 100 percent, its NOx emission by up to 90 percent and
its CO2 emissions by up to 20 percent.
“LNG
propulsion systems currently offer the greatest potential. Liquefied natural
gas is already helping us to reduce soot, nitrogen oxides and CO2
significantly,”
Gunnar
Stiesch, Head of Engineering Engines at MDT, explains. Setting up new-build
ships to run on LNG is simpler, of course. It is harder with vessels that are
already in service. “This ought to be the standard if we want to
achieve emphatic emission reductions relatively quickly, however,” says Enak
Ferlemann, BMVI Parliamentary Secretary of State.
Producing LNG synthetically
Under the heading ‘Power-to-Gas’, MDT is
therefore tackling the question of how to produce LNG using electricity from
renewable energy sources. “Research to this end is being
conducted in a methanation reactor that MDT Deggendorf is developing,” says
Gunnar Stiesch. “It is part of a joint project involving teams
from science and business. Engineers and scientists are working in a number of
sub-projects to describe a continuous chain from the production of
electricity-based fuels, through efficient combustion in engines, to exhaust
aftertreatment.”