MTU Power to X for commercial boating

MTU Power to X. Just to clarify, what does ‘Power to X’ mean? Basically ,we can say that’s the way to convert renewable energy. There are many options, you need just to replace the final ‘X’! For example, into methane gas (Power-to-Gas) or liquid methanol (Power-to-Liquid) or hydrogen (Power-to-Hydrogen). And what about MTU for microgrids? Please, READ our interview with Armin Fürderer! We report here some pills of the webinar organized by Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Speakers were been Stefan Müller, Director Application CenterMarine & Naval MTU Friedrichshafen, and Daniel Chatterjee, Director Technology Management& Regulatory Affairs and the Green-and High-Tech Program Rolls-Royce Power Systems.

MTU Power to X. The challenge has just begun

«One of the main challenges for our society and for the maritime industry as well is to get a climate neutral shipping. Every year we emit 36.573 Giga Tons of CO2. Major part is on PG (42%), on road transport (18%) and on maritime and rail transport (4%), maritime itself it’s at 2-3%. To achieve climate neutrality all the sectors need to give a governance, also in the maritime industry. The emissions from international shipping will increase between 50% and 250% because of the global trade will grow and by that the CO2 emissions will increase».

A huge investment

«We set up a green hi tech program where we say what are the technologies we need to work on and basically invest 500 millions euro in the next ten years. Our portfolio provides solutions for our customers to help them to have a CO2 reduction in their ships and, that, basically, efficiency. Will the engines for the next coming years need to increase regarding efficiency, via hybrid, electrification, digitalization».

Energy density

«We believe the combustion engines will stay for many years, for many reasons, especially for energy density and some engines they run on diesel they could run to gas, and also on hydrogen and on methanol. If you take one of our engine of 2 MW, running for 8 hours, he could need up to one hundred tons of batteries».

A geographical point of view about biofuels

«For marine we see biofuels, such as LNG, e-diesel and e-methanol and even hydrogen is very attractive fuel for Power to X. Where are these fuel produced? In one hand the electricity cost, in the other hand if you build a fuel plant look how much good time operating we have. Power plants in some regions like Chili, Patagonia or in Africa they come up to 6,000 operating hours per year. Blue one is more than 2,000 hours. South Chili and Patagonia look like very attractive regions, they produce a lot of renewable energy».