A FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR ZERO-EMISSION PASSENGER BOATS FOR INLAND WATERWAYS BASED ON HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS

As environmental concern is growing, decarbonization of maritime sector and reduction of pollutant emissions is a key-point, in particular in ports, inland water and for navigation nearby urban areas.Today the largest part of ships in operation still employs internal combustion engines fed by oil products for propulsion and energy generation onboard.Hydrogen and Fuel Cells can represent a promising solution for zero-emission propulsion, in particular for small size applications (up to 2 MW), where they can offer considerably higher efficiency compared to traditional engine solutions.Short-sea and inland navigation vessels can represent promising applications, also to avoid the use of excessive volume onboard for H2 storage, needed for long navigation routes (i.e.weeks in case of deep ocean).The present paper aims to investigate hydrogen fuel cell and compressed hydrogen (CH2) tanks (350 bar) solutions for inland navigation for two different passenger vessels operating on Italian lakes, considering both the technical and economic aspects.The analysis is performed in two subsequent steps: (i) first, a steady-state multi-criteria approach is adopted to compare the hydrogen based solution with the traditional one (engines fed by diesel oil) from emissions, costs, volumes and weights standpoints, considering the constraints related to the vessel type and dimensions; (ii) then, a time-dependent techno-economic analysis is performed considering the ships operating profile, determining the optimal size for energy generation modules and their best energy management strategy, aiming at annual costs minimization for both the case studies.The analysis is performed on real vessels energy demands by employing two software tools, HELM (Helper for Energy Layouts in Maritime applications) and W-ECoMP (Web-based Economic Modular Program), both developed by the authors' research group.The proposed approach has general validity and can be applied to different ships typologies, also considering different technologies for energy generation and storage onboard.