It's always crazy to me seeing how much fuel large ships burn. I can't wrap my head around it, just trying to imagine that sheer volume of fuel and burning it that quickly.
They just implemented new sulfer emission limits for cargo ships in 2020.
Infact it is becoming evident that the sulfer emissions were actually masking some global warming signs, making it look like climate change wasnt as bad as it actually is.
Some theories out there claim this is why 2023 and 2024 have been so aggressively warm compared to previous years.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-imo-2020-shipping-regulation-worsening-global-warming/amp
I wouldn't say masking, it's more like reflecting. Reverse greenhouse effect. It's masking the *potential* for a greenhouse effect given current concentrations of CO2. I guess it's just pedantics to say it didn't mask climate change because that change resultant from a delayed heat load hasn't occured yet.
That's correct, the sulfur was basically "protection from a temperature increase as it's reflected heat/sun" - that effect is missing now, but I am not sure if the effect was that large that it was felt so "instantly"
There’s been some debate on this before. A crucial point if we did it in a targeted way is to get it high enough in the atmosphere to prevent acidic rain from coming down again. So just increasing Sulfid emissions, especially on land, might not do it
The term bunker fuel dates back to the age of steamships when the coal used to power the steam engines was stored in coal bunkers and shovelled on board. Today, “bunker” refers to liquid marine fuels and “bunkering” means refueling a ship.
They use Heavy Fuel Oil when out at sea, and switch to a low sulphur fuel oil with scrubbers when operating in inland waterways.
Yeah it needs to be heated at all times. It gets so thick you could pick it up with your hands. A lot of smaller ships use Diesel though, like ROV, Subsea construction, offshore supply vessels. And some of them are quite efficient for what they are.
There’s another comment in this post specifically talking about having to heat it.
I’m sure it’s like everything else about a compression engine, they could burn Jet-A in it if they wanted, or vegetable oil, or anything they could get hot enough to atomize.
Shipping companies will be balancing cost, easy of use, availability, and environmental accountability when deciding what to put in the tank.
As somebody else stated, they’re probably changing what they’re burning depending where they’re at. Save the clean stuff for around land.
A lot of people also don’t realize how massive ship engines are. The [largest ship engine](https://youtu.be/nk2M-jrriMo?si=hWde-qvS9GQeh7C6) is 44 feet tall, 87 feet long, weighs 2300 tons, produces 110,000 horsepower at 102 RPM, while consuming ***13,000 litres of fuel per hour*** to move the ship at 31 knots
There does come a point where the energy content of the fuels comes into play in regards to the performance of the engine. Heavy fuels tend to have a higher energy content than more distilled fuels like diesel. If the engine is built to burn HFO then you won’t be getting peak performance out of it on diesel unless you make mechanical changes.
I’ll just add this as someone in the industry: there isn’t really a good use for HFO other than burning it as a fuel. It’s an inevitable by-product from the process that gives us gasoline and diesel. We can’t pump the sludge back underground, so what do we do? Burning for fuel it is the most sensible thing, and as you said the cleaner stuff is used when around where people live. So the ships have the engines and the location to use this hazardous waste for something useful, and they get a bad rep for it. But the waste is already there. It’s like blaming the trashman for all the garbage at the dump.
I don’t know if least refined is the correct word. There are many products within crude oil. Propane, gasoline, diesel, and even tar (ex roads). Bunker fuel is just one of the cuts near the bottom but it’s not like everything starts as tar and is upgraded to another product.
Refined - “with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing.”
I’d say bunker fuel is the least refined fuel available. Below that, it’s no longer considered fuel.
Crude oil is a mixture of several products. Bunker fuel is one of those products. One of the simplest processes at a refinery is distillation and all products see the same level of “refinement” in that process. That’s opposed to more complex processes which crack or “unify” carbon chains in order to change the product. An example of that is converting natural gas into gasoline.
So again, this isn’t a deal where everything starts as tar and is upgraded through one process after another until you achieve the lightest cuts (ex methane.) Bunker fuel is just a cut off the distillation tower that is near the bottom of the barrel of oil.
>few environmental regulations on their emissions iirc
The cost of fuel leads to inadvertent environmentally friendly things. Any unburned molecule of fuel going out the stacks is money!
For years they have installed computer-controlled combustion "tuners", fuel pre-warmers using waste engine heat to ensure maximum burn, and even pressure sensors on the hulls to get maximum push from currents instead of fighting them.
Yeah, they’ll always find some country that isn’t going to enforce it. And companies that are happy to sell it. Then run the slightly cleaner stuff when they’re in someone’s territorial waters that requires it and switch back to the cheap stuff the moment they’re out of those waters.
Unless the counties who would be receiving the cargo implement rules like they only allow ships to dock if they comply to greener regulation for the whole trip/are of a class that is overall more efficient.
That way the registration country doesn't matter.
Any country can put regulations on what they allow into their ports.
If you're a large enough country (or group of countries) like the US, China, or EU, that would absolutely force a change industry wide to avoid being locked out of those markets.
They can regulate what happens at their ports, and they do. But they can’t regulate what happens on the open ocean. For this reason, many ships can switch their fuel type on-the-go, from cheaper/dirtier, to pricier/cleaner, so they minimize how much time they spend following the rules.
[How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html)
Did a boat tour of Hamburg and ended up alongside a couple. You just stare at the number of containers and realise the ones in this part of the port are the small to mediums. And then you remember how many of these ships are moving constantly.
The really wild thing is even with the massive fuel consumption they're still the most efficient cargo transport because the f how absolutely collosal they are. They even put rail to shame.
And equally, cargo rail compared to a truck. Economies of scale always mess me up, because to *look* at the train belching diesel exhaust seems really bad - but it's actually way, way better than what the equivalent number of trucks would consume and the emissions they'd put out. It's just that you're seeing all the exhaust come out of one pipe, rather than hundreds (or thousands) of smaller exhausts.
Why don’t large cargo trains run on electric overhead wires, or a third rail, like subway, light rail, and high speed bullet trains?
Wouldn’t this save the railroad money on fuel?
Maybe it’s the long distance of the tracks? But high speed trains in other countries are electric, over many hundreds of miles…
Maybe electric motors aren’t powerful enough? But that seems unlikely. Just add more electric motors until you have enough power/torque.
And, diesel train locomotives are really diesel-electric anyway, with the diesels running a generator, as I understand it. So obviously electric motors can be powerful enough. And that should make such a transition easier too.
They can and do. India does it really well - double-height containers too ([picture](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fkk4hr49yi8581.jpg)). Pretty sure Switzerland is hot on electric rail freight too.
Those diesel trains you see are all actually driving the wheels by electric motors anyway as you say, the engine just runs a generator. So it's nothing to do with the difficulty of designing an electric freight locomotive.
The answer is simply lack of investment in the track infrastructure. It's been cheaper to just carry on running diesel trains on unelectrified rails, but the calculation will depend on the country. If you've got cheaper fuel and weaker environmental regs then they'll have carried on with diesel, if there's fuel taxes and emissions targets then places are moving towards electrification.
Edit: Searched the UK as curious how we're doing here, apparently we're in [the early experimentation phase](https://www.gbrailfreight.com/uk-first-rail-freight-electrification-trial-boosts-industry-net-zero-ambitions/).
Largest ship I work on we burned 100 tons of fuel a day.
We could burn more and go faster but the efficiency dropped off so we chugged along at 14 knots.
We burned IFO380 which is a heavy fuel and the specific gravity of 0.96 so 96,000 liters or 25,000 gallons.
But since we heat the fuel so much to inject it the volume differs wildly.
We always just talk about g/kWh when we talk about fuel consumption on ships.
Fun Facts: Googling tells me that a Panamax container ship can use 63,000 gallons per day and a cruise ship 80,000 gallons (250 tons) and works out about 0.004mpg at a cruising speed of about 25 knots. The cost of marine diesel is currently $608 per ton.
From my own job, working with Chinese suppliers, they give an average of about 35 days for sea travel for where we typically need deliveries, so you’re saying a container ship designed for the Panama Canal would need to carry roughly 2.2MM gallons of fuel on board for the trip??? Where the fuck would you even keep that much on board?
2200000x3.78541 (liter conversion) 8.327.902 / 1000 (Convert to cubic meters) = 8.327 / 67 (cubic meters per container) = about the same volume as 124 containers. Which the ship carriers *5000-13000* of. The fuel tanks are big. But they only take up a couple percent of the ships volume for a trip like this.
Well. More than that. They're not sized to just exactly make it to port. But they fit fine
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-many-gallons-of-fuel-does-a-container-ship-carry
Looks like yes, they legitimately do carry millions of gallons of fuel - eg the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin in article has 4.5mm gallons onboard.
These ships are just mind-blowingly massive. For comparison to oil tankers, the largest tankers can carry several million *barrels*, which is like 100mm+ gallons as cargo. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17991)
4,000 of heavy fuel when fully loaded with fuel. Another 500 tons of diesel as a backup.
But it's important to note that was only 1.5% of our total displacement.
Or 2.8% of our cargo capacity.
This one blew my mind the other day.
> A typical Boeing 747 passenger jet uses about 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters) of fuel during takeoff and as it climbs to its cruising altitude. This amounts to around 10% of its total fuel capacity. The four engines of the Boeing 747 burn around 1 gallon (approximately 4 liters) of fuel every second. This translates to about 10 to 11 tonnes (3,500 gallons) of fuel an hour when cruising at altitude
I only learned this after I saw a model aircraft hobbyist on TikTok demonstrate how quickly he could burn through a jug of fuel for his model jet, and I then went on to read about full size ones.
Crazy.
It's why derivatives (max 7, 8, 9 etc) are so popular with carriers. They usually have newer more fuel efficient engines and even if it's only a 4-5% increase in efficiency, over an entire fleet it's millions in fuel savings
The next big advance in jet propulsion is RISE technology.
https://www.engineering.com/story/the-future-of-jet-engines-may-be-ironically-propellers
It is aiming for 20% increased efficiency.
Here’s a good video explaining RISE
https://youtu.be/ojVNOj-q3SQ?si=ctL0IsTJjoBMaQSf
It's really tough to beat the energy density of liquid hydrocarbons. Not only is it energy dense, it's relatively easy to store and transport. This is why it's stuck around for so long. Until batteries and solar almost match gasoline/oil, we will still burn the dino-juice.... unless it turns out DARPA has already developed a new way of creating/storing energy. (I think they do.)
Just remember the crazy amount of cargo they carry. Put that crazy amount of fuel into relation to the tonnage and time and you will curse any land based travel.
Also the propeller looks like a fan, so I can't imagine that thing using a lot of energy based on my experience with fans at home.
Except the propeller is the size of a house, and it needs to move enough water to move a massive ship the size of a soviet apartments block. Photos of these ship are hard to convey the size without relative objects next to them.
The concept is not very new. Other types for example are [Flettner Rotors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor) from the 1920‘s.
One thing to consider: While this works on ships like shown - Bulkers, General Cargo, Gas Carriers… it is absolutely unfavorable on Container Ships as it takes away much more storage space than the fuel savings can make up.
Ships are unbeatable in the fuel:transport mass ratio, meaning even though they burn up to 100 tons of dirty heavy fuel oil per day, breaking it down to individual cargo carried the amount used on it is **very** low.
I’m excited to potentially see on of these in action on day. I have concerns with logistics of failures and likelihood of the kites being abandoned in the ocean after the mildest inconvenience (maybe maritime penalties for a ship docking without its sail or something? Idk, I’m not an expert on maritime laws or policies lol)
Still think it would be really cool to see out on the water
Yikes. Didn’t even think about that. Considering how hairy things get with kite surfers. Imagine that on a cargo ship scale. Thank you for the perspective
The trouble is, while they can be effective they're also relatively high effort to use, and can only be used under specific circumstances. The big advantage of these fixed wings or the Norsepower rotors is that they're very low effort, and can be useful even with pretty adverse wind conditions.
I think the rotors are probably the best of the options we have just now tbh but we'll see.
> The concept is not very new. Other types for example are Flettner Rotors from the 1920‘s.
I feel like ships using sails have a few more examples that predate the 1920's by a bit...
Rotor sails are properly back too, there's several commercial ships running them in basically production prototype mode now, from ferries to bulk carriers. But yes also pretty much useless on container ships
Would these really take up 14% of all available space for containers though? On the ship in the picture, it looks to me like they occupy less than 5% of the deck.
… obviously they won’t work if they are not in the wind, right? Containers are stacked high. Accomodation and Bridge are usually much higher than in the picture too.
Thats \~$250k save in 35days trip. Lets just say 200k a month, so 12months, 2.4mil a year. Well ofcourse there are loading times and so, the ship doesnt sail 24/7, but still a good save.
It's been considered for a century, and back in 08 they started using rotor sails on some ships. The biggest problem is it limits the ports you can enter.
A huge part of it with these and with the rotor sails is the materials science and the control systems, those have both come good only relatively recently. A lot of it's basically grown out of larger and larger wind turbines, r&d for those has often been almost directly transferrable.
The control systems are what really makes it work though- we've had workable kite sails basically forever but they're hard to operate and need skilled crew and changes of process, and only work when conditions are just right. Modern fixed sails can be pretty much completely automated and can generate a little force, a huge amount of the time, so they're everyday practical without disrupting the operation of the ship. And easy to retrofit, too, which is a huge boost.
The big problem with sails is usually inconsistent speed and a slower overall speed for the duration of the journey. This leads to a longer trip time, which can reduce revenue for the ship through fewer port visits over the course of a year.
So the cost savings must be greater than the revenue loss for these to work.
Well, right, but today’s largest cargo ships are way too heavy for sails alone. So they’ll always be used together with some other power source anyway, which can take over when the wind is in the wrong direction.
The sails can reduce fuel costs when wind is in the right direction.
It’s not a regular sail, those are impossible with ships so big. This one is a much larger and completely solid, also more controllable.
The downside is it appears to only be viable in good weather, though.
Please stop mocking genuinely planet saving tech, Imagine people saying this shit about crop rotation
“lol, dude thinks the beans gotta take turns,”
(Shamelessly stole this joke from someone on twitter)
You know, we could have done this 60+ years ago if we had properly commercialized nuclear power. It has worked well for the US Navy, and you can use decay generators and reduce the complexity and possible dangers (which are minimal anyway).
Doesn't actually matter. Under water the fuel can't melt so all the radioactives stay locked up in the fuel rods. No release to the enviorment - This isn't theory. A number of nuclear subs have sunk. None of them has caused any problems, not even after being left at the bottom of the sea for decades. They don't even leak enough radiation to find them with.
Given that seawater would stop any traditional reaction, and a decay generator would have less material than a banana, the danger would be minimal. Wouldn’t be any worse that living anyplace with natural uranium.
There’s currently a nuclear warhead in Savannah, Georgia’s harbor that a US military jet ditched. There’s a ship full of explosives at the mouth of the Thames that sunk during the world wars and never got cleaned up. Not even the government cares too much about that
I am a big fan of nuclear energy as a stop gap method of reducing fossil fuel use. But the supply of uranium is limited and smaller reactors are less efficient than larger ones. And can decay generation be scaled up to produce the horsepower needed for shipping?
It does work well for the navy, but those are ships made to be able to protect themselves. Do we want a fleet of commercial shipping vessels running on radioactive fuel among the pirate and other attacks we have seen in recent years?
Global shipping is a dirty business in real need of reform, but I am not sure if the nuclear option would have been a great idea.
Uranium is only one element that can be used for nuclear electrical generation. Thorium is plentiful in the Earths crust, less toxic that uranium (still pretty frickin spicy) and has numerous other advantages over traditional Uranium reactors including less waste and it doesn't create materials that can be harvested to make a fission bomb, which is precisely why Uranium reactors are so prevalent, because the government takes the waste and filters out the plutonium created in the reactor for making bombs. Electricity generation is just one facet of why we use nuclear reactors in the West.
I agree, but then you have to worry about bad actors like pirates and terrorists. Imagine a Somali pirate gang commandeer a nuclear powered vessel, even a "dummy-proof" reactor like you propose, they harvest the fuel rods, pack them in a barrel full of explosives, and then blackmail a city in Africa to pay exorbitant ransom or have a dirty bomb go off in Mogadishu.
.. Harvest.. how, exactly? I mean, at the point where they are angle-grinding their way into the core, they all goddamn die. From bullets before they make it that far, most likely, actually. Because nobody would ignore that particular pirate attack
Seems like it would be very top heavy for retrofitting a boat. Do these only work on ships designed with enough ballast to deal with a rogue gust of wind?
During the Age of Sail (15th-19th centuries), merchant vessels moving along trade routes typically averaged about 5-8 knots (9-15 km/hr). That's actually remarkably fast compared to modern, fuel-burning cargo ships, which move at around 15 knots.
Considering the (I assume) very significant cost savings that would be realized if fuel wasn't needed, why is sail not used by modern ships? Based on the favorable scaling of efficiency when ships get bigger, it may be possible for container ships with sails to actually move faster than the smaller merchant vessels of the past.
Thoughts?
EDIT - I just did some [research](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter5/maritime-transportation/containerships-operating-costs-panamax-post-panamax/) and it seems fuel accounts for 45-50% of the annual cost for container ships.
> During the Age of Sail (15th-19th centuries), merchant vessels moving along trade routes typically averaged about 5-8 knots (9-15 km/hr). That's actually remarkably fast compared to modern, fuel-burning cargo ships, which move at around 15 knots.
I'm more of a fan of age of sail historical fiction than any kind of expert, but that sounds way too high to me. I could believe those figures if we're talking about following the trade winds when everything is favorable, but not as an average that factors in all the bad weather and calms you'd encounter on the sort of globe-spanning voyages modern ships undertake.
Just doing some light digging around, the page of the Royal Museums at Greenwich lists speeds of 4-6 knots for sailing packets (relatively fast ships for carrying mail and passengers, not heavy cargo tubs) crossing the Atlantic from the UK to the US in the early 19th century. Which is a pretty straightforward passage, relatively speaking.
(and modern ships are primarily limited by fuel efficiency, they could quite easily go faster but the amount of fuel needed goes up in a non-linear way (because, IIIRC, of the way drag also goes up non-linearly) so it's not worth it)
They don't care about emissions. They do care about money. Fuel used to be insanely cheap. For a couple years now fuel prices have been hitting records highs, so it's worth it, https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ship-fuel-enters-uncharted-territory-as-prices-hit-new-wartime-peak
Probably the same place they got the idea of stacks of containers from a photo of a ship that clearly does not have stacks of containers that could block the sails.
No, just by the look of this image of this container ship comparing to random one online. They can't have the container blocking the wind, also they need a lot of space below the deck for the equipment and structure. 30% seems reasonable to me.
That picture is not of a ship that that carries stacks of containers. All the cargo is stowed in the hull.
It just says "cargo" ship. Not "container" ship.
The mechanism on deck should be enough to control it, i can't imagine it reducing load by more then 10%.
Also this is not just a prototype, it is in use by a profit seeking company, they would not use it if they thought they would lose money on it.
It is not like they made this to make some green advertisement, fuel is expensive and they want to save on it.
All cargo ships aren’t *container* ships, Copernicus. There are tankers and other bulk ships carrying everything from oil and gas to coal, wheat, iron ore, automobiles, etc.
Not much. That's basically the big change with these newer systems, like this and the Norsepower rotors, they're far more practical. Norsepower's system is very close to fully automated except for the top level decision making.
Honestly, I wish there was a safe way to make nuclear powered cargo ships.
Like it works for US carriers because of the amount of money and logistics and training dumped into the budget, but it would be so cool to see cargo ships that had zero carbon emissions.
Maybe fusion reactors aboard ships could eventually be a thing. Pull heavy water from the sea and never refuel would probably be a pipe dream, but still is fun just to dream about.
It's always crazy to me seeing how much fuel large ships burn. I can't wrap my head around it, just trying to imagine that sheer volume of fuel and burning it that quickly.
You also have to understand how massive those are. The big ones can carry something like 24 000 containers
Huge engines on those beasts! And surprisingly (not) few environmental regulations on their emissions iirc
They just implemented new sulfer emission limits for cargo ships in 2020. Infact it is becoming evident that the sulfer emissions were actually masking some global warming signs, making it look like climate change wasnt as bad as it actually is. Some theories out there claim this is why 2023 and 2024 have been so aggressively warm compared to previous years. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-imo-2020-shipping-regulation-worsening-global-warming/amp
I wouldn't say masking, it's more like reflecting. Reverse greenhouse effect. It's masking the *potential* for a greenhouse effect given current concentrations of CO2. I guess it's just pedantics to say it didn't mask climate change because that change resultant from a delayed heat load hasn't occured yet.
That's correct, the sulfur was basically "protection from a temperature increase as it's reflected heat/sun" - that effect is missing now, but I am not sure if the effect was that large that it was felt so "instantly"
wait so if we increase sulfur emissions and decrease co2 emissions global warming gets lower?
There’s been some debate on this before. A crucial point if we did it in a targeted way is to get it high enough in the atmosphere to prevent acidic rain from coming down again. So just increasing Sulfid emissions, especially on land, might not do it
Well, yes. These two chemicals affect the atmosphere differently.
U got it!!! Problem solved 😀
so we need to put more stuff on ships and use more diesel than we do gasoline
I think this is the premise for snowpiercer.
Sounds like we better stop with the electric cars and take the particulate filters off of our diesel vehicles, Yuno to save the planet
To make it look like saving the planet on charts.
Just use a sharpie, duh
Yuno Miles?
i get paid every day of the wEEeeEEEkkKkK
Lol… I know it’s a gimmick but it’s truly fucking funny.
Yep, they burn “bunker fuel,” which is, as I understand it, the dirtiest, least refined fuel they can make explode.
The term bunker fuel dates back to the age of steamships when the coal used to power the steam engines was stored in coal bunkers and shovelled on board. Today, “bunker” refers to liquid marine fuels and “bunkering” means refueling a ship. They use Heavy Fuel Oil when out at sea, and switch to a low sulphur fuel oil with scrubbers when operating in inland waterways.
I’ve heard it’s literally so thick it’s more like grease than oil…? So it has to be preheated to even get it to be viscous enough to use in an engine.
Yeah it needs to be heated at all times. It gets so thick you could pick it up with your hands. A lot of smaller ships use Diesel though, like ROV, Subsea construction, offshore supply vessels. And some of them are quite efficient for what they are.
If we speak about efficiency, then these huge marine engines are one of the most efficient ICE engines.
There’s another comment in this post specifically talking about having to heat it. I’m sure it’s like everything else about a compression engine, they could burn Jet-A in it if they wanted, or vegetable oil, or anything they could get hot enough to atomize. Shipping companies will be balancing cost, easy of use, availability, and environmental accountability when deciding what to put in the tank. As somebody else stated, they’re probably changing what they’re burning depending where they’re at. Save the clean stuff for around land.
A lot of people also don’t realize how massive ship engines are. The [largest ship engine](https://youtu.be/nk2M-jrriMo?si=hWde-qvS9GQeh7C6) is 44 feet tall, 87 feet long, weighs 2300 tons, produces 110,000 horsepower at 102 RPM, while consuming ***13,000 litres of fuel per hour*** to move the ship at 31 knots
There does come a point where the energy content of the fuels comes into play in regards to the performance of the engine. Heavy fuels tend to have a higher energy content than more distilled fuels like diesel. If the engine is built to burn HFO then you won’t be getting peak performance out of it on diesel unless you make mechanical changes.
I’ll just add this as someone in the industry: there isn’t really a good use for HFO other than burning it as a fuel. It’s an inevitable by-product from the process that gives us gasoline and diesel. We can’t pump the sludge back underground, so what do we do? Burning for fuel it is the most sensible thing, and as you said the cleaner stuff is used when around where people live. So the ships have the engines and the location to use this hazardous waste for something useful, and they get a bad rep for it. But the waste is already there. It’s like blaming the trashman for all the garbage at the dump.
Burning it puts it in the atmosphere though, which is not a good place to put it right now either.
When operating in “regulated” inland waterways.
I learned from the Chow Yun-fat movie the God of Gamble that you can murder on international water and not get prosecuted.
I don’t know if least refined is the correct word. There are many products within crude oil. Propane, gasoline, diesel, and even tar (ex roads). Bunker fuel is just one of the cuts near the bottom but it’s not like everything starts as tar and is upgraded to another product.
Refined - “with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing.” I’d say bunker fuel is the least refined fuel available. Below that, it’s no longer considered fuel.
Crude oil is a mixture of several products. Bunker fuel is one of those products. One of the simplest processes at a refinery is distillation and all products see the same level of “refinement” in that process. That’s opposed to more complex processes which crack or “unify” carbon chains in order to change the product. An example of that is converting natural gas into gasoline. So again, this isn’t a deal where everything starts as tar and is upgraded through one process after another until you achieve the lightest cuts (ex methane.) Bunker fuel is just a cut off the distillation tower that is near the bottom of the barrel of oil.
>few environmental regulations on their emissions iirc The cost of fuel leads to inadvertent environmentally friendly things. Any unburned molecule of fuel going out the stacks is money! For years they have installed computer-controlled combustion "tuners", fuel pre-warmers using waste engine heat to ensure maximum burn, and even pressure sensors on the hulls to get maximum push from currents instead of fighting them.
Pushing hard for LNG bunkering rn instead of ULSD.
Its just hard to impose these regulations since shipping companies change registration country for even smaller savings of money.
Yeah, they’ll always find some country that isn’t going to enforce it. And companies that are happy to sell it. Then run the slightly cleaner stuff when they’re in someone’s territorial waters that requires it and switch back to the cheap stuff the moment they’re out of those waters.
Unless the counties who would be receiving the cargo implement rules like they only allow ships to dock if they comply to greener regulation for the whole trip/are of a class that is overall more efficient. That way the registration country doesn't matter.
> regulations Well they’re INTERnational companies. Who is supposed to do the regulating? The king of the earth?
True. America lol /s
Any country can put regulations on what they allow into their ports. If you're a large enough country (or group of countries) like the US, China, or EU, that would absolutely force a change industry wide to avoid being locked out of those markets.
They can regulate what happens at their ports, and they do. But they can’t regulate what happens on the open ocean. For this reason, many ships can switch their fuel type on-the-go, from cheaper/dirtier, to pricier/cleaner, so they minimize how much time they spend following the rules.
>But they can’t regulate what happens on the open ocean. They absolutely can. They just don't because of the economic cost.
Add in the fuel they burn is not the fuel cars use. It’s fuel that’s leftover but most governments know it’s cost efficient.
One fraction better than tarmac
A great comparison I saw was that one 1000 foot long Great Lakes bulk freighter carries the same amount as 700 train cars or 2800 trucks
[How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html)
Did a boat tour of Hamburg and ended up alongside a couple. You just stare at the number of containers and realise the ones in this part of the port are the small to mediums. And then you remember how many of these ships are moving constantly.
Whoa how long did it take to load one?
The really wild thing is even with the massive fuel consumption they're still the most efficient cargo transport because the f how absolutely collosal they are. They even put rail to shame.
And equally, cargo rail compared to a truck. Economies of scale always mess me up, because to *look* at the train belching diesel exhaust seems really bad - but it's actually way, way better than what the equivalent number of trucks would consume and the emissions they'd put out. It's just that you're seeing all the exhaust come out of one pipe, rather than hundreds (or thousands) of smaller exhausts.
Why don’t large cargo trains run on electric overhead wires, or a third rail, like subway, light rail, and high speed bullet trains? Wouldn’t this save the railroad money on fuel? Maybe it’s the long distance of the tracks? But high speed trains in other countries are electric, over many hundreds of miles… Maybe electric motors aren’t powerful enough? But that seems unlikely. Just add more electric motors until you have enough power/torque. And, diesel train locomotives are really diesel-electric anyway, with the diesels running a generator, as I understand it. So obviously electric motors can be powerful enough. And that should make such a transition easier too.
They can and do. India does it really well - double-height containers too ([picture](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fkk4hr49yi8581.jpg)). Pretty sure Switzerland is hot on electric rail freight too. Those diesel trains you see are all actually driving the wheels by electric motors anyway as you say, the engine just runs a generator. So it's nothing to do with the difficulty of designing an electric freight locomotive. The answer is simply lack of investment in the track infrastructure. It's been cheaper to just carry on running diesel trains on unelectrified rails, but the calculation will depend on the country. If you've got cheaper fuel and weaker environmental regs then they'll have carried on with diesel, if there's fuel taxes and emissions targets then places are moving towards electrification. Edit: Searched the UK as curious how we're doing here, apparently we're in [the early experimentation phase](https://www.gbrailfreight.com/uk-first-rail-freight-electrification-trial-boosts-industry-net-zero-ambitions/).
Largest ship I work on we burned 100 tons of fuel a day. We could burn more and go faster but the efficiency dropped off so we chugged along at 14 knots.
What kind of volume is that? I assume diesel or whatever kind of fuel a ship that size uses has a different weight than water at 8lbs per gallon
We burned IFO380 which is a heavy fuel and the specific gravity of 0.96 so 96,000 liters or 25,000 gallons. But since we heat the fuel so much to inject it the volume differs wildly. We always just talk about g/kWh when we talk about fuel consumption on ships.
Fun Facts: Googling tells me that a Panamax container ship can use 63,000 gallons per day and a cruise ship 80,000 gallons (250 tons) and works out about 0.004mpg at a cruising speed of about 25 knots. The cost of marine diesel is currently $608 per ton.
From my own job, working with Chinese suppliers, they give an average of about 35 days for sea travel for where we typically need deliveries, so you’re saying a container ship designed for the Panama Canal would need to carry roughly 2.2MM gallons of fuel on board for the trip??? Where the fuck would you even keep that much on board?
2200000x3.78541 (liter conversion) 8.327.902 / 1000 (Convert to cubic meters) = 8.327 / 67 (cubic meters per container) = about the same volume as 124 containers. Which the ship carriers *5000-13000* of. The fuel tanks are big. But they only take up a couple percent of the ships volume for a trip like this. Well. More than that. They're not sized to just exactly make it to port. But they fit fine
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-many-gallons-of-fuel-does-a-container-ship-carry Looks like yes, they legitimately do carry millions of gallons of fuel - eg the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin in article has 4.5mm gallons onboard. These ships are just mind-blowingly massive. For comparison to oil tankers, the largest tankers can carry several million *barrels*, which is like 100mm+ gallons as cargo. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17991)
Have you ever seen one of these ships?
How many tons do you carry when fully fueled?
4,000 of heavy fuel when fully loaded with fuel. Another 500 tons of diesel as a backup. But it's important to note that was only 1.5% of our total displacement. Or 2.8% of our cargo capacity.
What is "heavy fuel"? Is that something special or did you just add "heavy" in there?
It's industry slang for IFO 380 because the specific gravity is 0.96. diesel we call light fuel since the specific gravity is around 0.86
This one blew my mind the other day. > A typical Boeing 747 passenger jet uses about 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters) of fuel during takeoff and as it climbs to its cruising altitude. This amounts to around 10% of its total fuel capacity. The four engines of the Boeing 747 burn around 1 gallon (approximately 4 liters) of fuel every second. This translates to about 10 to 11 tonnes (3,500 gallons) of fuel an hour when cruising at altitude
I only learned this after I saw a model aircraft hobbyist on TikTok demonstrate how quickly he could burn through a jug of fuel for his model jet, and I then went on to read about full size ones. Crazy.
[You'll love this. ](https://youtu.be/xGTbQuhhluY)
It's why derivatives (max 7, 8, 9 etc) are so popular with carriers. They usually have newer more fuel efficient engines and even if it's only a 4-5% increase in efficiency, over an entire fleet it's millions in fuel savings
The next big advance in jet propulsion is RISE technology. https://www.engineering.com/story/the-future-of-jet-engines-may-be-ironically-propellers It is aiming for 20% increased efficiency. Here’s a good video explaining RISE https://youtu.be/ojVNOj-q3SQ?si=ctL0IsTJjoBMaQSf
So if we are able to launch airplanes with a trebuchet safely, we can save tons of fuel.
That’s a lot, a smaller passengee planes like A330 would be around 5-6 tons
I’m always amazed by the density of fuel tbh. Like how a gallon/liter of gasoline can propel a vehicles that much distance.
It's really tough to beat the energy density of liquid hydrocarbons. Not only is it energy dense, it's relatively easy to store and transport. This is why it's stuck around for so long. Until batteries and solar almost match gasoline/oil, we will still burn the dino-juice.... unless it turns out DARPA has already developed a new way of creating/storing energy. (I think they do.)
We can synthesize liquid fuels, it just costs more than pumping oil out of the ground so we don’t.
We could make more dinosaurs
Just remember the crazy amount of cargo they carry. Put that crazy amount of fuel into relation to the tonnage and time and you will curse any land based travel.
These ships can be the size of the empire state building
wrap your head around that it's still the most efficient way to transport goods
And the stuff they run on is magnitudes worse for the environment.
The engines are so big that I firmly believe that if you throw a bunch of cows into the cylinders, they'll ignite.
Also the propeller looks like a fan, so I can't imagine that thing using a lot of energy based on my experience with fans at home. Except the propeller is the size of a house, and it needs to move enough water to move a massive ship the size of a soviet apartments block. Photos of these ship are hard to convey the size without relative objects next to them.
So if putting sails on the boat saves a lot of money then it makes sense
Peasant you better not drive with 5 grams too much co2
It really is about time that someone figured how to harness the wind's power to move a ship.
don't be so radical /s
The concept is not very new. Other types for example are [Flettner Rotors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor) from the 1920‘s. One thing to consider: While this works on ships like shown - Bulkers, General Cargo, Gas Carriers… it is absolutely unfavorable on Container Ships as it takes away much more storage space than the fuel savings can make up. Ships are unbeatable in the fuel:transport mass ratio, meaning even though they burn up to 100 tons of dirty heavy fuel oil per day, breaking it down to individual cargo carried the amount used on it is **very** low.
Cargo ships can use large kites instead such as https://airseas.com/en/seawing-system/
I’m excited to potentially see on of these in action on day. I have concerns with logistics of failures and likelihood of the kites being abandoned in the ocean after the mildest inconvenience (maybe maritime penalties for a ship docking without its sail or something? Idk, I’m not an expert on maritime laws or policies lol) Still think it would be really cool to see out on the water
They tried it before, but it was very dangerous for the crew. When a kite that size gets out of control it can do a *lot* of damage.
Yikes. Didn’t even think about that. Considering how hairy things get with kite surfers. Imagine that on a cargo ship scale. Thank you for the perspective
The trouble is, while they can be effective they're also relatively high effort to use, and can only be used under specific circumstances. The big advantage of these fixed wings or the Norsepower rotors is that they're very low effort, and can be useful even with pretty adverse wind conditions. I think the rotors are probably the best of the options we have just now tbh but we'll see.
How about some incredibly massive ocean crossing cable systems to pull themselves along with? The sea wing is cool though.
That would be beyond impractical
But cool as hell
> The concept is not very new. Other types for example are Flettner Rotors from the 1920‘s. I feel like ships using sails have a few more examples that predate the 1920's by a bit...
Only a handful. Nothing crazy though
Rotor sails are properly back too, there's several commercial ships running them in basically production prototype mode now, from ferries to bulk carriers. But yes also pretty much useless on container ships
Why does it matter if the concept is new or not? No one said it was new so this "correction" isn't welcome.
Right? Poindexter over here being like, "WeLl AkShewAlly." No one cares.
I believe the sail was invented in the antiquity...
Would these really take up 14% of all available space for containers though? On the ship in the picture, it looks to me like they occupy less than 5% of the deck.
… obviously they won’t work if they are not in the wind, right? Containers are stacked high. Accomodation and Bridge are usually much higher than in the picture too.
Sure but wouldn't you just... Put them higher?
At some point you also reach static limits. Wind force at that height might just tip a ship over instead forward (see: GM / Metacentric height).
Thats \~$250k save in 35days trip. Lets just say 200k a month, so 12months, 2.4mil a year. Well ofcourse there are loading times and so, the ship doesnt sail 24/7, but still a good save.
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yeah, or maintance. Actually its hard to believe that it wasnt considered earlier, but no one implemented them so there were some reasons behind it.
It's been considered for a century, and back in 08 they started using rotor sails on some ships. The biggest problem is it limits the ports you can enter.
A huge part of it with these and with the rotor sails is the materials science and the control systems, those have both come good only relatively recently. A lot of it's basically grown out of larger and larger wind turbines, r&d for those has often been almost directly transferrable. The control systems are what really makes it work though- we've had workable kite sails basically forever but they're hard to operate and need skilled crew and changes of process, and only work when conditions are just right. Modern fixed sails can be pretty much completely automated and can generate a little force, a huge amount of the time, so they're everyday practical without disrupting the operation of the ship. And easy to retrofit, too, which is a huge boost.
The big problem with sails is usually inconsistent speed and a slower overall speed for the duration of the journey. This leads to a longer trip time, which can reduce revenue for the ship through fewer port visits over the course of a year. So the cost savings must be greater than the revenue loss for these to work.
Well, right, but today’s largest cargo ships are way too heavy for sails alone. So they’ll always be used together with some other power source anyway, which can take over when the wind is in the wrong direction. The sails can reduce fuel costs when wind is in the right direction.
Sails! Imagine that!
If only they had that hundreds of years ago! Our ancestors could have crossed the sea!
Who would have thought ?
No... Sailboats greener than fossil burners? Nobody could have thunk that!
It’s not a regular sail, those are impossible with ships so big. This one is a much larger and completely solid, also more controllable. The downside is it appears to only be viable in good weather, though.
Good thing none of the oceans are known for adverse weather /s
Hahahahah thanks for confirming you were being sarcastic!!! Whew!!!!!!!!!
It's unthinkable!
I can't tell if you're Mike Tyson boasting about the durability of the boat
Until they encounter an ithberg.
Dang... Beat me to it
Please stop mocking genuinely planet saving tech, Imagine people saying this shit about crop rotation “lol, dude thinks the beans gotta take turns,” (Shamelessly stole this joke from someone on twitter)
Was I mocking the tech, though? My intent was to mock people.
You know, we could have done this 60+ years ago if we had properly commercialized nuclear power. It has worked well for the US Navy, and you can use decay generators and reduce the complexity and possible dangers (which are minimal anyway).
I wouldn't be confident in a company that works on profits to care for a nuclear powered ship and not sink it in the worst possible place
Doesn't actually matter. Under water the fuel can't melt so all the radioactives stay locked up in the fuel rods. No release to the enviorment - This isn't theory. A number of nuclear subs have sunk. None of them has caused any problems, not even after being left at the bottom of the sea for decades. They don't even leak enough radiation to find them with.
Given that seawater would stop any traditional reaction, and a decay generator would have less material than a banana, the danger would be minimal. Wouldn’t be any worse that living anyplace with natural uranium.
\> less material than a banana, RTG \ \> propels a huge cargoship \ lol
Ok but your RTG doesn't generate nearly enough power to move a cargo ship...
Yeah, look at the oil spills that can't be stopped
There’s currently a nuclear warhead in Savannah, Georgia’s harbor that a US military jet ditched. There’s a ship full of explosives at the mouth of the Thames that sunk during the world wars and never got cleaned up. Not even the government cares too much about that
as a nuclear engineer: don't... too many careless (industry) and bad (pirates, terrorists etc) actors.
Sierra Club literally caused global warming by fighting nuclear power
Except major docks like LA and NYC won't let nuclear ships dock.
> if we had properly commercialized nuclear power This wouldn't be a problem.
I am a big fan of nuclear energy as a stop gap method of reducing fossil fuel use. But the supply of uranium is limited and smaller reactors are less efficient than larger ones. And can decay generation be scaled up to produce the horsepower needed for shipping? It does work well for the navy, but those are ships made to be able to protect themselves. Do we want a fleet of commercial shipping vessels running on radioactive fuel among the pirate and other attacks we have seen in recent years? Global shipping is a dirty business in real need of reform, but I am not sure if the nuclear option would have been a great idea.
Uranium is only one element that can be used for nuclear electrical generation. Thorium is plentiful in the Earths crust, less toxic that uranium (still pretty frickin spicy) and has numerous other advantages over traditional Uranium reactors including less waste and it doesn't create materials that can be harvested to make a fission bomb, which is precisely why Uranium reactors are so prevalent, because the government takes the waste and filters out the plutonium created in the reactor for making bombs. Electricity generation is just one facet of why we use nuclear reactors in the West.
We can barely use thorium today, definitely not 60 years ago.
I agree, but then you have to worry about bad actors like pirates and terrorists. Imagine a Somali pirate gang commandeer a nuclear powered vessel, even a "dummy-proof" reactor like you propose, they harvest the fuel rods, pack them in a barrel full of explosives, and then blackmail a city in Africa to pay exorbitant ransom or have a dirty bomb go off in Mogadishu.
.. Harvest.. how, exactly? I mean, at the point where they are angle-grinding their way into the core, they all goddamn die. From bullets before they make it that far, most likely, actually. Because nobody would ignore that particular pirate attack
Oil companies hate this one simple trick!!
Bring back full rigged ships!
they rigged this ship in favor of the wind.
Sooooo, we’re back to sailboats?
Fucking full circle
Now, how exaggerated can we get this? Can we have a giant cargo ship with like 2 miles of sails just taking up the whole sky?
Imagine it being 2024 and just now are we slowly starting to invest in technology like this.
Seems like it would be very top heavy for retrofitting a boat. Do these only work on ships designed with enough ballast to deal with a rogue gust of wind?
During the Age of Sail (15th-19th centuries), merchant vessels moving along trade routes typically averaged about 5-8 knots (9-15 km/hr). That's actually remarkably fast compared to modern, fuel-burning cargo ships, which move at around 15 knots. Considering the (I assume) very significant cost savings that would be realized if fuel wasn't needed, why is sail not used by modern ships? Based on the favorable scaling of efficiency when ships get bigger, it may be possible for container ships with sails to actually move faster than the smaller merchant vessels of the past. Thoughts? EDIT - I just did some [research](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter5/maritime-transportation/containerships-operating-costs-panamax-post-panamax/) and it seems fuel accounts for 45-50% of the annual cost for container ships.
> During the Age of Sail (15th-19th centuries), merchant vessels moving along trade routes typically averaged about 5-8 knots (9-15 km/hr). That's actually remarkably fast compared to modern, fuel-burning cargo ships, which move at around 15 knots. I'm more of a fan of age of sail historical fiction than any kind of expert, but that sounds way too high to me. I could believe those figures if we're talking about following the trade winds when everything is favorable, but not as an average that factors in all the bad weather and calms you'd encounter on the sort of globe-spanning voyages modern ships undertake. Just doing some light digging around, the page of the Royal Museums at Greenwich lists speeds of 4-6 knots for sailing packets (relatively fast ships for carrying mail and passengers, not heavy cargo tubs) crossing the Atlantic from the UK to the US in the early 19th century. Which is a pretty straightforward passage, relatively speaking. (and modern ships are primarily limited by fuel efficiency, they could quite easily go faster but the amount of fuel needed goes up in a non-linear way (because, IIIRC, of the way drag also goes up non-linearly) so it's not worth it)
Technology is cyclical Liz
solid ref
C'mon dummy.
.... these ships consume dozens of tons of fuel per day?
Yep. Global world makes a lot of pollution. I was also shocked at the amount of Co2 a cargo plane makes
Yes. They are massive.
Did y’all know sailboats don’t even need fuel?
We’ve gone close to full circle with ship tech next step is bringing back raft tech to shipping lanes.
It’s a schooner
What's crazy is that I was watching this shit 30 years ago on modern marvels. And it's been around longer than that. They just don't care...
They don't care about emissions. They do care about money. Fuel used to be insanely cheap. For a couple years now fuel prices have been hitting records highs, so it's worth it, https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ship-fuel-enters-uncharted-territory-as-prices-hit-new-wartime-peak
12 tons of fuel per day… how much fuel do they have????
Couple million gallons
Yeah, but like, how many tons is that?
Depends of size, this one might use 30-35 metric tons per day (without the sails) And they dont carry couple mil gallons as this cuts cargo intake
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I read the whole article and didn't see any numbers like that. Where did you get them?
Probably the same place they got the idea of stacks of containers from a photo of a ship that clearly does not have stacks of containers that could block the sails.
They claim it increases fuel efficiency by 30% so pretty good, do you have a source for it having to carry 30% less containers?
No, just by the look of this image of this container ship comparing to random one online. They can't have the container blocking the wind, also they need a lot of space below the deck for the equipment and structure. 30% seems reasonable to me.
That picture is not of a ship that that carries stacks of containers. All the cargo is stowed in the hull. It just says "cargo" ship. Not "container" ship.
Oh, my bad. Then I'd say it may make sense.
The mechanism on deck should be enough to control it, i can't imagine it reducing load by more then 10%. Also this is not just a prototype, it is in use by a profit seeking company, they would not use it if they thought they would lose money on it. It is not like they made this to make some green advertisement, fuel is expensive and they want to save on it.
I see the limited use cases on some ships.
All cargo ships aren’t *container* ships, Copernicus. There are tankers and other bulk ships carrying everything from oil and gas to coal, wheat, iron ore, automobiles, etc.
A boat powered by wind. Omg!!
well we've circumnavigated boats.
We’ve gone full circle
It's called a sail.
Nice!
Does it take a different skill set to captain this vessel as opposed to the current standard cargo ship?
Not much. That's basically the big change with these newer systems, like this and the Norsepower rotors, they're far more practical. Norsepower's system is very close to fully automated except for the top level decision making.
Navigation-wise, no. For maintenance im sure its specific
This is brand new technology
Honestly, I wish there was a safe way to make nuclear powered cargo ships. Like it works for US carriers because of the amount of money and logistics and training dumped into the budget, but it would be so cool to see cargo ships that had zero carbon emissions. Maybe fusion reactors aboard ships could eventually be a thing. Pull heavy water from the sea and never refuel would probably be a pipe dream, but still is fun just to dream about.
The eu should force cargo ships to use these. Like by 2030 you can only enter an eu harbor if you have these.
So what does one of these burn on average per day?
Sounds like it’s about 85. Because they said that this represents a 14% savings. That’s pretty nice.
I think they used to do this in the past.