Winged cargo ship saves three tonnes of fuel per day on first voyage
An age of greener, more efficient shipping may be in the offing as a specially modified 43,000-tonne bulk freighter completes a six-month sea trial using a combination of diesel engines and a set of high-tech automatic sails to catch the wind.
I get the whole "this isnt new" sentiment but we cant just swap right back to 100% wind power without developing NEW wind propulsion methods. We need to either match the speed of engine powered ships or increase efficiency (like this has).
Unless you want to go back to ships taking many more months or years to cross the ocean like they used to. Being snarky about ships using wind again is completely the wrong attitude to have if we want to make this work.
The long term solution is probably a combination of technologies - hydrogen and solar to power some propellers cleanly, batteries to regulate the solar and wind power, new and improved "sails" like this, channeling energy from waves, new types of coating that significantly reduce friction and increase gliding factor, new much lighter containers to reduce total weight, etc...
Probably just need to use biofuels and or very large battery systems. Generating enough energy on a vessel of that size probably isn't feasible. Could maybe switch to nuclear instead that seems risky
Next they should replace the diesel engines with bigass electric motors, and put solar panels over every top surface of the vessel that they can, and even possibly on the sail-wings too. Wind and solar powered shipping would be a good combo since there are plenty of both out on the seas. Charge the boat batteries at port as needed, cruise while collecting solar power etc
Great idea but a cargo ship has like 2% top surface showing, the rest is containers of future landfill :(
I have a 4'x10' flatbottomed boat. Of the 40sq./ft. I cover 45% in solar to make a modest trolling motor go 6-7mph. Weight with myself, wife, battery, cells, misc. gear: 300lbs.
Solar ain't gonna get it on a cargo ship weighing 165,000 tons and a couple of football fields long.
Flat bottomed boats they make the rocking world go round.
Maybe something like diesel-electric that they use with trains with solar panels providing some of the electricity is a more realistic thought.
Not even close to enough surface area to power them with solar. Even if the entire ship held up a solar array that completely shadowed the ship would it be enough.
They already are propelled by electric motors - but the electricity is generated by massive fossil fuelled generators.
I look forward to hydrogen-fueled ships and hydrogen-fueled planes. That's going to be fun.
Wow... The innovation... Sails on ships... Next they add wheels to sleighs, These nerdy bastards
Rather than usual sails these are solid and foldable and act more like plane wings
I mean sails form an aerofoil but these are ridged aerofoils.
lowkey tired of being able to guess the exact snarky deadpan top comment before opening the post
no hate to you commenter. :) its a funny comment and the world is fucked i just wish we could for once be genuinely happy and celebrate that engineers are helping us do better
Boomerhumor
That's a good start. Now get rid of the rest of the diesel fuel used.
IIRC it still burns a crapload of regular fuel, say 14T a day; so yeah, it’s a savings, but it needs to be better.
Any savings is a good step. stop discounting those steps
14% gain is still extremely good.