Will the end of new petrol/diesel cars in 2030, affect boat propulsion?

Look out for Norway's new electric boat motors - Plugboats

Norway’s new electric boat motor company Evoy is racking up awards, investment and partnerships as it moves toward launch in the next few months.
Its vision is nothing less than to eliminate global boating emissions, and it is starting by putting together a range of electric inboard and outboards – from 75 to 670 kW (100 to 900hp) – for work boats in the aquaculture industry and then moving into faster planing hull boats.


Oil Giants Plan for A Future With Less Crude, More Hydrogen ...
www.bloomberg.com › news › articles › oil-giants-plan...
Sep 15, 2020 — Indian Oil Corp., one of the biggest refiners in Asia, is taking the bus to reach what it considers the future of energy: hydrogen.
 
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Hydrogen I am sure has to be the solution, it needs some blue sky thinking on it to work out how to split it and store it.

The Germans are clever when they closed one of their coal mines they built a lake next to it, filled it with water put a turbine in the coal mine shaft and when they need more electric they pour the lake down the coal mine, when they have excess electricity they pump the water back out into the lake. Whilst the water is down there at the bottom of the mine where its permanently hot they ran a network of pipes, which are used as a huge ground source heat pump so extracts energy that way. Creates jobs where many lost them, uses a resource thats been made that would in this country have just been covered over. We seem as a country to have lost that edge, that inventiveness.
 
Hybrid power is the only practical solution for cars and boats at the moment if we want to continue doing the journeys we are used to and not have a small range and long recharging times.

Cheapest hybrid car is the Toyota Prius... £23k + £3k guvmint subsidy, so real cost £26k
Cheapest petrol car is the Dacia Sandero... £7k

So that's a factor of 3.7 more expensive.

Twin diesels in a 33' Broadblue 346... £17k
Twin hybrid powered electric motors... £90k

For boats that's even worse, a factor of 5.2 more expensive.

dancrane said:
I can imagine practical solutions appearing at reasonable cost.
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I don't see it happening any time soon.
 
chrishscorp said:
Hydrogen I am sure has to be the solution, it needs some blue sky thinking on it to work out how to split it and store it.
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Physics and chemistry get in the way. There is no way to make an efficient hydrogen cycle. The production of it is inefficient in terms of energy in to energy out, then there's the compression or cooling which is also energy intensive and reduces efficiency, and more inefficiency converting it back to mechanical power. It will only become viable if either we have unlimited cheap electrical power from, for example, a fusion reactor or we have a lot of temporary unused capacity from renewables. Neither is likely any time soon.

In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future.
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From physics.org.
 
Cost aside, I'd love an electric boat with lithium batteries, charged from solar and the prop while under sail. I'd never willingly buy a battery powered car for reasons already mentioned. Hydrogen looks interesting though.
 
Luminescent said:
Storage costs of hydrogen are not that much after the initial expense... that's one of the advantages of Hydrogen vs Battery.
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How are you proposing to store it?

While Electrolysis may be wasteful somewhat, when working through renewable supplies, it doesn't matter so much. This is typically why Electrolysis is done when the grid has too much energy, so instead of wasting the lot, we only waste half.
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On the contrary, when working with renewable supplies it matters even more. We simply cannot afford to throw half the electricity we generate away. Electrolysis is not done when the grid has too much energy because - with the exception of Orkney, as listed above - the grid never has too much energy

I'd still sooner have a hydrogen fuelled car than an electric battery car... just for sheer convenience even if it does convert hydrogen to electricity rather than actually using hydrogen directly. I may have to make a run 20 miles out of my way once a week but that takes about an hour round trip (ish) and I can be refilled in a matter of minutes. Rather than minimum 12hrs at home (small batteries) or half an hour with a superfast charge (tesla) although more often a fast charge is still a few hours.
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There are attractions, in some circumstances, to hydrogen as a fuel, though I am not sure I would include "saves me plugging in a charger for 30 minutes by letting me do a 20 mile trip instead." It's getting the stuff that's the issue.
 
I can't help thinking that many of the arguments that a diesel engine is indispensable are because many of us, me included, are used to turning on the donk because the wind is wrong, be it wrong strength or wrong direction. We use them as motor boats with sails, rather than sailing boats with an engine to get us out of trouble. Actually, not even trouble, inconvenience, like being late for our restaurant booking. Go back to the 50s and many (most?) boats either didn't have an engine or had one that could be relied on not to start when you really, really needed it. Most of them didn't die...

Marinas mean some sort of reliable power is pretty much essential today - I'm imagining the Hamble on a Sunday, late afternoon with no engines, I reckon it would be something worth watching, from a safe distance. Uma manages pretty well with an electric motor that gives about three hours under power and takes a few days to recharge from solar, but electric power with limited duration would mean reimagining the way many of us sail, especially for those who are severely time limited.

Electric cars, once the cavernous loophole of "capable of zero emissions" has been shut down, will change the way many of us, especially the urban, live. Cars will be a liability for them with nowhere to recharge - my daughter lives in a flat on a main street. Never mind charging facilities, never mind even yellow lines, you can't even unload within 100m, but she has shops and a tube station within an easy walk. She's lived in similar places since moving out and hasn't bothered to get a licence. Maybe hydrogen will save us; at the moment, it does seem to be one of the simpler ways of storing the large amounts of electricity that enough renewables to cope with peak demand produce off peak, but ISTM that we're some way off that. One thing I can see is growth in car club schemes, where you pick up a car locally, use it and return it and plug it in when you're done.
 
Fiddlesticks said:
Cost aside, I'd love an electric boat with lithium batteries, charged from solar and the prop while under sail. I'd never willingly buy a battery powered car for reasons already mentioned.
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You'd have the same problems with your boat as you'd have with a car - ages to charge and tiny range. A typical 10m boat might have a 20 hp engine which could be replaced with a 15 kW electric motor. A 1 kW solar installation would be the maximum you could get on a boat that size if you covered all the decks, and you'd only get that in perfect conditions - bright mid summer sunshine. The rest of the time in gloomy UK you might get a quarter of that. If the boat cruises using half the 20 hp that would be 7 kW. So you'd be looking at a charge to use time ratio of 7 to 28 to 1 - 2 full days solar charging for 1 hour motoring. Prop charging won't be any better.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Physics and chemistry get in the way. There is no way to make an efficient hydrogen cycle. The production of it is inefficient in terms of energy in to energy out, then there's the compression or cooling which is also energy intensive and reduces efficiency, and more inefficiency converting it back to mechanical power. It will only become viable if either we have unlimited cheap electrical power from, for example, a fusion reactor or we have a lot of temporary unused capacity from renewables. Neither is likely any time soon.

From physics.org.
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Posted on November 22, 2017 by Matt Wandel
Debunking Dr. Bossel’s Anti-Hydrogen Thesis


Debunking Dr. Bossel’s Anti-Hydrogen Thesis
 
Stemar said:
I can't help thinking that many of the arguments that a diesel engine is indispensable are because many of us, me included, are used to turning on the donk because the wind is wrong, be it wrong strength or wrong direction. We use them as motor boats with sails, rather than sailing boats with an engine to get us out of trouble. Actually, not even trouble, inconvenience, like being late for our restaurant booking. Go back to the 50s and many (most?) boats either didn't have an engine or had one that could be relied on not to start when you really, really needed it. Most of them didn't die...
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They're indispensable to the way most people use their boats now. We could all go back to the days before reliable engines, but people don't want to. Simples.
 
As well as being needed for HGVs and so on, ICE engines will still be needed for generators since an electrically powered generator would have somewhat limited appeal, unless you are willing to wait for six months while the solar panel charges your Battery.
 
JumbleDuck said:
How are you proposing to store it?
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If you've got the space, big tanks. Think gasholders. If you haven't got the space, liquify it. In your car, a tough cylinder. I can't see that it'd be significantly more dangerous than petrol because a leak will disperse quickly, not sit around waiting for an idiot with a cigarette

On the contrary, when working with renewable supplies it matters even more. We simply cannot afford to throw half the electricity we generate away. Electrolysis is not done when the grid has too much energy because - with the exception of Orkney, as listed above - the grid never has too much energy
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The thing with wind, solar and tidal power, which are the only really viable renewables - biomass takes up too much good land that's needed for food production - is that they produce power when they feel like it, not when we want it, and storage of electricity is, pace Tesla Power Wall, not at the point where we can store enough power for a winter evening peak in an anticyclone. Enough to smooth things out for a few hours, but not enough to cover several cold grey windless winter days. I hope we'll get to the point where, technically and politically, we can supply Europe by covering the Sahara with solar panels, but it won't be by 2030, and we'll still need ways to store that power for the night. I wouldn't suggest that H2 is the only, or even the best way, but it's one way.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
They're indispensable to the way most people use their boats now. We could all go back to the days before reliable engines, but people don't want to. Simples.
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But the way people use boats isn't fixed any more than the way boats are propelled are. Universal income will likely be with us within a decade, and those who choose to work will likely end up with more free time as the number of jobs is outstripped by the number of people. Many countries are moving to 4 day weeks experimentally too in the interim while employers the world over are moving to more flexible working hours and locations.
What actually needs to change here is governments in my opinion. If we remove the border problems like VAT and income tax and allow people to be much more free then this will work itself out. My job allows me to work from anywhere but I'm glued to the UK because wandering about is very difficult. As a result my cruising is limited to short stints and a deisel feels necessary. If I didn't need to get back on a timeline why would I need the motor for more than 20 minutes at a time? If I can sit and work while there's no wind for potentially weeks on end and then move when conditions allow then the deisel would not be necessary.

I realise that a lot of people will be enraged by the above and bring out similar arguments against social progress as they do for deisel engines. That's fair enough, but do try to do some research and have a bit of a growth mindset before getting shouty here ;)
 
Stemar said:
covering the Sahara with solar panels
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This, along with widespread use of Hydrogen could be devastating for the planet so have a good think before pushing too hard on it. With Hydrogen any gas leak will rise high in the atmosphere, potentially causing issues the way Helium does. Covering the desert regions with something to remove all that solar energy will drastically impact global weather patterns which are largely caused by all that heat in those regions. Just because something seems obviously better doesn't mean it necessarily is. Even the burning of fossil fuels has an upside - all the extra CO2 has actually had a positive effect for plant life where it's been allowed to flourish. Of course that plant life then creates biomass which rots and creates methane which does more damage...

Realistically we need to balance local power creation and consumption. We may need to reduce power usage to achieve this or increase power production, but we should eventually be able to create a balance if we try. Using solar makes the most sense since the energy taken out of the system would mostly be released locally as heat when used, which would probably have the lowest overall impact. We also shoudln't forget that most people in developed places live near rivers or ports for traditional reasons. We can and perhaps should change that to make better use of renewables now that we no longer rely on boats as much for trade.
 
If we can extract natural gas out of the ground and then cool it (and store it) for transportation in ships it shouldn't be hard to do the same for hydrogen?

When natural gas is cooled to a temperature of approximately -260°F [-160°C] at atmospheric pressure it condenses to a liquid called liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Hydrogen turns into a liquid when it is cooled to a temperature below -252,87 °C. At -252.87°C and 1.013 bar, liquid hydrogen has a density of close to 71 kg/m3.
 
lustyd said:
This, along with widespread use of Hydrogen could be devastating for the planet so have a good think before pushing too hard on it. With Hydrogen any gas leak will rise high in the atmosphere, potentially causing issues the way Helium does. Covering the desert regions with something to remove all that solar energy will drastically impact global weather patterns which are largely caused by all that heat in those regions. Just because something seems obviously better doesn't mean it necessarily is. Even the burning of fossil fuels has an upside - all the extra CO2 has actually had a positive effect for plant life where it's been allowed to flourish. Of course that plant life then creates biomass which rots and creates methane which does more damage...

Realistically we need to balance local power creation and consumption. We may need to reduce power usage to achieve this or increase power production, but we should eventually be able to create a balance if we try. Using solar makes the most sense since the energy taken out of the system would mostly be released locally as heat when used, which would probably have the lowest overall impact. We also shoudln't forget that most people in developed places live near rivers or ports for traditional reasons. We can and perhaps should change that to make better use of renewables now that we no longer rely on boats as much for trade.
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Hydrogen Effects on Climate, Stratospheric Ozone, and Air Pollution
https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/ib0KJnIw5S-8G1RS8EqnPg/2.1.8.jacobson.pdf
 
No current electric car can tow over 750kg and then only with hugely reduced range. Furthermore the ban is only in the UK so a complete waste of time. Even with a zero carbon UK this would have absolutely no effect on world pollution.
 
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