Future Applications of Wind Power For Maritime Propulsion

Ships today, diesel or whatever, are being increasingly run on what's called Distillate Fuel Marine or DFM.

https://www.exxonmobil.com/en-gq/co...late,barges used for black oils such as RMFO.
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Heavy bunker oil, or Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), is in steep decline in marine use because of environmental regulations. To use it the ship has to pre-heat the HFO to relatively high temperature (usually using waste steam from what are called hotel loads) to decrease the viscosity to a point where it is a thin liquid that can be sprayed into the boiler firebox or fed through fuel injectors into a diesel. That makes it inefficient.

https://livebunkers.com/heavy-fuel-oil-hfohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/nishan...troversial-five-killer-facts/?sh=78f1dfd274c0
What makes its use attractive is the low cost of procuring it.
 
Hobbes said:
Pasoleati said:
Hobbes: Why use utterly unenvironmental solar/wind power (especially wind power plants occupy huge amounts of land and pose significant danger to birds and are ugly eye-pollution) to produce low-carbon fuels when much more sensible option, nuclear power exists? I know nothing more perverse than climate alarmists who oppose nuclear power. They should be hunted to extinction.
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You're assuming something I never said. I'm not opposed to nuclear power in principle, but I'm pragmatic enough to see that the world isn't headed to a future where a large percentage of power is produced by nuclear plants.
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This is unfortunate in terms of electrical power generation on land as nuclear is very much the most environmentally friendly and most economical way to produce large quantities of electrical power. For ships, it is impractical. The singular worst way to produce large quantities of electrical power is solar. It is just terrible and not particularly environmentally friendly.
 
Grey Havoc said:
In this unexpectedly white-hot realm of tech, crowns for innovation are changing hands all the time. Next for an upgrade is a 5,000-year-old piece of tech, the humble sail. In October, an as yet unnamed 770ft coal carrier owned by Mitsui OSK is due to become the world’s first such vessel to include a rigid, winged sail in its propulsion system.

In an era of energy price inflation and ever more ambitious climate change targets, the idea of exploiting freely available sea breezes has graduated from interesting to imperative. Other companies around the world, including the tyre giant Michelin, have been developing ideas along similar lines, but Japan’s – a retractable sail made of fibre-reinforced plastic that sits at the ship’s prow and can extend to 15 metres wide and 50m high – will be the first to go into service.

Fossil-fuelled shipping accounts for 3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but Mitsui estimates the sail will cut diesel consumption on these vast ships by an average of 5 per cent a year. It says it plans to add the sails to as many of its fleet as possible and will sell the tech to rival carriers to use on their vessels.

When bringing tech on this scale from the drawing board to a 100,000 ton ship, the hurdles are not just technical. (The sail, which has been in development since 2009, owes its low weight to advanced plastics and its function to ever more powerful weather-analysing software, which dictates the positioning and size of sail as the wind changes.) They are also about willpower and large-scale corporate investment.
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Here’s a simple idea;- there’s a shaft from the wind turbine, which goes through a gear box the drive the screw at the stern. I know the chap that built this, a really clever guy.
 

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Yes I think it does via an auxiliary shaft off take, This one is a shaft power transfer to the screw but I guess there’s nothing stopping you using a generator to motor architecture.
 
It's pretty obvious that this system generates DC power at the turbine coupled to the propeller like other wind turbines do. The problem I see with this set up is that when it is generating to one side of the boat or the other, it will create a considerable amount of force on the boat. I suppose if you have a large keel board to extend (like sailboats do), you can counter that.

The other issue might be when you are sailing directly into the wind the turbine is fighting the propulsion motor.
 
The hull is a catamaran as opposed to monohull and keel board. This was done to give high side load stability. According to the chap that built and sailed for her, she went very sweetly into wind but one had to be careful of pitch poling in rough seas (a permanent high cg which couldn’t be reduced in the manner of pulling down a sail), feathering the props become essential.
 
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