Are Sails the Future of Cargo Shipping? - DTNS Weekend

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3:11Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition, gratefully provided to you by supporters of this show. On the weekend, we talk about topics a little bit more in depth. I'm Dr. Nikki, I'm the science correspondent for DTNS, and I'm here with a very special guest today to talk about cargo shipping. In kind of in reaction to a news piece that came out last November, the world's largest cargo sailing ship, the Neolino Origin, embarked on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. And this is a cargo ship that also has sails. And we're noticing that there's a trend of wanting to reduce the carbon footprint of shipping, cargo shipping specifically.

3:52So I brought on an expert. Jim Ackermans is here, but also known as my dad. Welcome to the show. I brought you on today because you know a lot about ships. And so we want to hear about what you have to say. So, hi. Hey, thank you for having me. Of course. Can you share some of your qualifications with the audience? Like, what do you do and why do you know so much about ships, I guess? Well, I used to be a marine engineer. I'm now retired. so I've worked at sea for about 30 years and also did some construction projects of new build ships and yachts with the idea as well of not trying to reduce our carbon footprint and that's the last project I did a hybrid propulsion vessel So you've worked on a large sail motor project before, starting from idea to blueprints to actually being on it while it was moving.

5:05How did that go as much as you can talk about it? And, you know, did that work out? Yes, mostly it worked out. It was a super interesting project with some really brilliant ideas as far as saving energy was concerned. So it was a large sailing yacht, the largest sailing yacht, with carbon fiber freestanding masts, so no rigging, some huge sails, but only mainsails. and then the idea was that the vessel under sail would obviously save a lot of fuel and one thing that didn't work out too well was that under sail the propellers some drag would be created on the propellers because of the forward movement and then that would make the propellers rotate and they could then generate energy.

6:14And that part didn't work out. And that part, it did work. The problem was that the ship consumed so much energy that the idea of completely sailing without using hydrocarbon fuels just wasn't working because of the consumption of electricity on board. You still had to run generators. However, it did save a tremendous amount of fuel. Can you give us an idea of the length of this ship generally to compare to this cargo? So the Neoliner is 136 meters long and normal cargo ships are about over 400 meters long. Where would you place your project in that size range? Yeah, this ship was 146 meters long.

7:08Okay, so bigger than the Neoliner. Yeah, 24 meters wide and had a displacement of 12 ,500 gross tons, which was tremendous. And not for shipping, just for fun, right? Yeah, it was a motor yacht. Do they still... Sail-assisted motor yacht, it's called. So, yeah, okay, so sail-assisted. So they're not, like you said, they're not mainly sailing. And these sails, they go up and down automatically with motors, right? Do they still use the sails while they're sailing, or do you think they're mainly engine propelled? I don't know if you know. When the conditions are favorable, they use the sails, yes, for sure.

7:53Okay. It saves a lot of fuel. About how much? Do you have a percentage? It depends. It completely depends on the weather. It depends on the direction in which they're going. What about a max percentage? Well, the vessel could probably sail as far as propulsion goes by itself, but then you'd still have to run a generator to provide electricity for the hotel loads, as they call them, air conditioning, lighting, kitchens, washers, dryers, all that stuff. Okay. Do you think that this technology can translate well to cargo ships or is it just a gimmick? We talked about this news piece of the Neoliner.

8:44Do you think that that's worthwhile from your professional opinion? Oh, absolutely. I think it can provide tremendous fuel savings. And it's a relatively small investment, all relatively speaking, of course, depending on the size of the vessel, the size of the sales needed. and it's estimated that it could save between 10 and 20 percent of annual fuel consumption, which then you could have your return on investment within between seven and 10 years. And just as like a personal thought, do you just think it's like cool engineering wise? Like as far as the tech goes, I don't know how familiar you are with it, but tell us about that.

9:35No, there's obviously different types of sails, such as the flattener rotor. There's composite sails that are retractable and foldable because they need to be, otherwise they get in the way of the loading and unloading of cargo. Oh, right. But that's all been thought about, and there's some amazingly smart people working on this. And it's definitely something that is finally getting interest from the big shipping companies. Yeah. And, you know, I mentioned that this test vessel kind of is almost a quarter of the size of normal commercial cargo ships. Do you think we'll get like 400 meter plus cargo ships with sails at some point?

10:31Or is that not scalable in terms of like weather or just how big those sails would have to be to move that kind of volume? No, I think it's very well possible. And it's all relative to the size of the vessel. Obviously, calculations have to be made. And as you said, it has to have a certain weather-resistant maximum wind speeds and stuff. But these sails, and it's all fully automated, and they will retract by themselves if the wind speed exceeds a certain number. So it's all scalable to whatever size is required. So what do you think is holding them back from doing that now? Is the technology not quite there yet or is it investors or maybe people don't believe in it?

11:27Well, it's this sailing or renewable energy assistance has been going on for a while. The problem is more, first of all, regulations. So the IMO is now really requiring new built ships. International Marine Organization? Yes, International Maritime Organization. That was close. As part of the United Nations, there's 176 member states. and now a new law will be voted upon that new-built ships have to meet certain, showing at least that they're making an effort in reducing their carbon footprints and existing ships might have to meet certain emission standards, which means retrofitting them with modern technology.

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15:38Yeah, well, meaning, examples. Oh, so you just mentioned like retrofitting. is that like fuel filters or adding a solar panel on deck or like what are we looking at in terms of the technology i'm specifically talking about sales oh where it's now been proven that a ship obviously it's every time these ships come into port they lose money because they're not traveling and they can't be picking up cargo and stuff like that so there's a company i believe it's in norway that is building prefabricated masts and sails that can be installed on a ship within 48 hours or something. Also retrofitted to pre-existing ships.

16:30Yeah, and that's very low downtime. Yeah, wow. And then they'll be able to save, once the installation is done, they'll be able to save up to 10-20 % of fuel consumption. And so that's interesting for them because obviously that saves a lot of money. I suppose that only targets a certain category of ship since they're like prefab. Well, if the study is done, say a ship orders this kit of sails, then somebody is going to come and measure. and based on the ship's characteristics and their normal traveling route, they can then do a study, make a proposal. The owner accepts the proposal and is willing to pay the price.

17:23And then this is all prefabricated in a factory. And then when the ship is in port, they will then try and install this sailing kit as quickly as possible with the least amount of downtime. This is wild to me. I feel like we're going back to like the pirate ship sailing times. So, but we've talked about sailing. Do you think that's the best form of alternative energy in terms of, you know, cost? Or are there other ones that might be better like solar or hydrogen or other ones? I don't believe solar is practical just because the surface area required to generate that kind of energy is just insufficient on any ship.

18:09It's all obviously relative. The bigger the ship, the more horsepower is required. I guess you're trying to reduce drag by having a narrower ship, but then less room for solar panels. So that doesn't really work out. Right. So there's another study which is obviously controversial, but very miniature nuclear reactors are being studied now. It's a great idea as far as emissions are concerned because it is zero emissions. Yeah. Zero carbon emissions. I don't know if we count the nuclear waste or not. That's the thing. The nuclear waste is a problem. But I don't know. Nobody knows. Well, it's not that nobody knows.

19:01What is more important? Is it to reduce carbon emissions or not have nuclear waste? Or the possibility of exploding? I don't know how dangerous it would be. I guess we're pretty good at that since we have submarines. With these mini-nuclear reactors, the idea would be to, as a containment zone, it would be the ship itself. Gotcha. Whereas, obviously, nuclear reactors have been in use by the Russian Navy and the American Navy and Russian icebreakers. You know, it's been in use for many, many years so far without any major incidents, although there is a couple of submarine stories that we could dig up.

20:00so as long as the the containment area is the ship itself then they're looking now at the problem is that no port will would accept a ship a nuclear powered vessel because it's too dangerous in case of an accident and i guess we we talked about for uh leisure vessels something similar for hydrogen that the problem was not necessarily running on hydrogen but ports accepting hydrogen fuel vessels right yeah there is a hydrogen built powered vessel which is a combination of hydrogen and diesel fuel can we tell the name of that one yeah that it's uh it was actually a bill gates developed this project and the vessel is called breakthrough it's been sold In the meantime, I don't know who the owner is.

20:56But that was the first built hydrogen vessel. The problem is the regulations for safety regulations for that type of vessel haven't fully been developed yet. So, again, to try and load hydrogen, first of all, infrastructures don't exist. It's a large quantity of hydrogen. at the moment crew is not allowed to be on board while hydrogen is being loaded that's problematic I assume it can only be loaded from a contained area it's very very difficult so maybe not the future is maybe not hydrogen are there any other alternative sources that you think have promise or that maybe people aren't talking about enough?

21:55Yeah, I believe that, well, there's a combination of things that could reduce emissions a lot. So there's heat recovery. There's some solar in some instances. What's heat recovery? Oh, heat recovery is, there's a lot of heat generated by machinery on ships, whether it's exhaust. I think I know that because of how sweaty it is in the engine room on board. Right. So engine exhaust systems, cooling water, which gets heated up because it's used as a cooling media.

22:41there's numerous other things the heat of the engine itself for example and there is equipment now where you can absorb that heat through a cooling media or a heating media and just to keep it in simple terms the fluid goes in on one side of this machine and electricity comes out of the other. Sounds great. Yeah. I can't tell you all the details. No, that's okay. Anyway, so that's one form. Another form is methanol or a green methanol, rather, or green biofuel. So the idea is there that with biofuel, for example, the idea is that you are net zero CO2. So the biofuel that's created from a plant-based product, whether it's corn or whatever, absorbs enough CO2 that when you are actually burning it, the amount of emissions equals the amount of CO2 that's absorbed by the plants while it's growing.

24:10Oh, cool. I like that idea. That's what net zero means. Great. Yeah, go ahead. and with methanol it produces very little emissions but it also has its inconvenience where methanol is very corrosive so it's hard to retrofit on a ship it would have to be a new build type vessel and the materials required to build fuel holding tanks is very expensive. It's mainly stainless, a certain type of stainless steel. Obviously not to be corrosive because that will cause other problems. Hydrogen, sorry, green hydrogen because there's no point in producing hydrogen with hydrocarbons because the amount of hydrocarbons required to produce hydrogen doesn't make sense.

25:17So it needs to be green hydrogen. And the problem with hydrogen is that the hydrogen molecules are so small that they would seep through conventional steel. So again, you need special materials because steel is too porous for hydrogen. That's wild. I never thought about what material is it that can contain it out of curiosity. I believe it's a special type of stainless steel again. Gotcha. Okay. So there are options. You kind of came up as a traditional sailor, like zero hydrocarbon, like an actual sailing ship person. So is the sailing part the most exciting part or are there types of tech that, you know, just to wrap up that you're really excited about, or you like to nerd out about, or you just think are really interesting or you want to mention yes i i was very interested in this flattner rotor which oh yeah the one that didn't work well no it does work the problem was it was invented in the 1920s so it's not new technology but the problem is that after the 1920s between in the 1920s and later on, especially after the war, I think oil became very cheap and also the commercial or industrial diesel engine made its way up the ranks and ships started retrofitting steam turbines for diesel engines because oil was so much cheaper and easier to use, I suppose.

27:08So that Flettner rotor fell out of popularity, let's say. And so the industrial diesel engine took over, or marine diesel engine took over. And now they've revived the Flettner rotor. and it's quite an amazing thing. Is this the project that you worked on the first one to kind of bring this back recently? No, no, not at all. It's just some reading I did and then watched some videos on how it works and it's super interesting. It's not pretty, but it definitely works as a propulsion method And again, it's all relative to the size of the ship. The bigger the ship, the bigger the Flettner rotor. Maybe I missed this.

28:02Is this the one that creates energy as you're running? Or are we talking about something different? The reverse propeller thing? No, it's a big cylinder that's standing on the deck of... Please explain the Flettner rotor to us. Sorry, I thought we were talking about something else. Oh, no, it's a big cylinder that stands vertically like a mast on a ship. And they do need a small amount of energy to get it spinning. But once it starts spinning, the vessel actually starts moving because of the Magnus effect that it creates while it's spinning. it is important to have the wind from the right angle so it's more a system that's so like creates or it sustains momentum yes it's it's like a sail it creates a low pressure on one side and a high pressure on the other because it's spinning yeah i like that seems very steampunk or like sci-fi to me Okay.

29:10It is. It's amazing that Mr. Flettner obviously invented this in the 1920s. He was a brilliant engineer. Okay. My last question, unless I've forgotten about anything that you want to mention, my last question would be, you know, if you were to build the next, you know, super green, perfect ship, either for leisure or for cargo, what would you, how would you propel it?

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30:39Oh, that's a great question. Thank you. I would use a number of different things. And obviously, sails is one thing. That can be retrofitted on most commercial vessels. This Flettner rotor is interesting, but it depends. If it's a regular route where you always have the wind coming towards the side of the ship, that would be an interesting thing. For example, for ferries, you know, that do regular routes, always the same direction with having the wind on the side, one side or the other, port or starboard, doesn't matter. That would definitely be a thing. I think hydrogen at the moment is just not, it's too dangerous.

31:38It's kind of scary, yeah. I wouldn't be comfortable sleeping on a hydrogen boat. Yeah, the rules aren't clear.

31:48Batteries is possible because the battery technology is developing very, very fast. And batteries are already being used in certain small ferries that don't have to do very long distances. So basically they're charging the batteries with shore power, so when they're plugged in to the dock. But for long voyages, I think sails is probably the most interesting. And it'll never be for a super tanker or a large cargo ship. It will only contribute to fuel savings and not 100 % zero emissions. But on the other hand, there are a lot of emission reduction technologies out there, which the IMO is going to make, hopefully, mandatory in December 2026.

32:57Oh, soon. Because, well, they were supposed to vote on it last year, but the Trump administration, unfortunately, asked him to delay it for a year. Okay. So hopefully this year in December it'll be voted on. And there's a specific set of rules that applies to new build vessels and existing vessels. Obviously we'll have different rules. There has to be a balance between emissions and a company's ability to be able to invest and get a return on their investment.

33:41It's a very vast field and it's very complicated. So we're just touching the tip of the iceberg. iceberg i think that's a good place to leave it i think i mean i don't know we don't talk about shipping often on dtns so it's good to just dip in a toe and and see i don't know how many more ship puns i can make but rock the boat or something anyway um yeah so that gives us a good overview and you know listeners if you have comments about it please write in and let us know and i'll i'll text my dad and ask him what he thinks um you can find more about dtns at daily tech news show.com and DTN show on socials.

34:23Thank you so much, dad for coming and giving us this info. For me, you can find my infer information at Nicole Ackermans.com and the same handle on blue sky. You probably have heard by now. I've started a new show with when sway Dow called technical tea. Our next episode is going to be about eponyms. So please come and check that out at the beginning of the month. And we are technical tea. Dot show. So thank you for supporting the show at patreon.com slash DTNS. We will be back with regular news episodes on Monday. And until then, have a great weekend.

35:03The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

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36:41today. Thank you.