Airbus commissions three wind-powered ships to sail the Atlantic
- Reference: 1698384433
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/27/airbus_ships/
- Source link:
The plane-maker on Thursday revealed it has “commissioned shipowner Louis Dreyfus Armateurs to build, own and operate these new, highly efficient vessels that will enter into service from 2026.”
The ships will have conventional engines that run on maritime diesel oil and e-methanol, the latter fuel made with a process that produces less CO 2 than other efforts. Many ships run on heavy fuel oil, the gloopiest, dirtiest, and cheapest of the fuel oils. Airbus has therefore gone out of its way with the choice of diesel and e-methanol.
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The ships will also feature half a dozen Flettner rotors, rotating cylinders that produce the Magnus effect – a phenomenon that produces lift thanks to pressure differences on either side of a rotating object. The rotors were invented over a century ago and are generating renewed interest as they reduce ships’ fuel requirements.
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Here’s what they’ll look like on Airbus’s boats.
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Airbus's future ocean transports - Click to enlarge
Airbus expects its three vessels to enter service from 2026 and has calculated they will reduce its average annual transatlantic CO 2 emissions from 68,000 to 33,000 tonnes by 2030. However, the ships will also help the planemaker to increase the number of A320 aircraft it makes to 75 per month, and each of those craft will make plenty of CO 2 .
[5]It is 20 years since the last commercial flight of Concorde
[6]ESA gets the job of building Europe's secure satcomms network
[7]Airbus suffers data leak turbulence to cybercrooks' delight
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The craft will have capacity to move around seventy 40-foot containers and six single-aisle aircraft sub assembly sets - wings, fuselage, engine pylons, horizontal and vertical tail planes. Airbus’s current ships can only move three or four of those sets.
The ships will most often travel from Saint-Nazaire, France, to an A320 assembly line in Mobile, Alabama.
Airbus also operates custom planes to move its parts. The company’s [9]Beluga features an expanded and bulbous fuselage and lowered nose. The planemaker made a fleet of Belugas based on its venerable A300 but has since planned replacements that use the A330 as a template. ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/20_years_concorde/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/22/esa_wins_iris2_satellite_contract/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/13/airbus_data_leak/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/28/asia_in_brief/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2016/05/20/airbus_to_build_plane_thats_even_uglier_than_the_a380/
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Re: What happened to .....
Who knows what happened. My guess is that it's all a load of greenwashing.
Whilst the Flettner concept is very clever, I have to observe that the artists impression looks tremendously unstable, and vessel itself looks like a derivative of car carriers (which have a pretty poor record for capsizing even without gluing several hundred-feet tall tubes on the lid).
Re: My guess is that it's all a load of greenwashing.
On the other hand, my guess would be that they are trying a range of moderately promising things out, to see what works best; and inevitably some don't work out as well as they hoped.
Re: What happened to .....
" the artists impression looks tremendously unstable"
These ships carry a lot of weight below the waterline and are much more stable than they look. The Flettner rotor pipes would basically be hollow tubes, I don't think they would weigh much compared to the rest of the ship.
Re: What happened to .....
The car-carriers (the Ro-Ro roll on, roll over) variant is quite susceptible to taking water when the nose breaks off - which then sloshes around in the car deck, leading to listing and the ship keeling over.
Re: What happened to .....
"By choosing your route to maximise trailing winds you should be able to get the most out of both technologies."
A couple of years ago we visited the Cutty Sark in London and it was fascinating tryinng out a "simulator" to follow the route it used to take to make the fastest journey from China to the UK - down round Australia to the southern ocean, round Cape Horn then up the eastern side of the south atlantic, crossing over to the western side of the north atlantic till it picked up the trade winds along the gulf stream - this was several days faster than what appeared to be more direct an shorter routes!
BelugaXL
The new BelugaXLs are in service, we regularly see them going over on their way to the Airbus UK factory near Chester. Airbus aren't binning off the older models either. They've been spun off to a new outsize cargo airline carter business as they've got comparatively low airframe hours for their age. Airbus are certificating the XLs for ETOPS so they'll be able to fly from Europe to the US as well.
Lift??
"Magnus effect – a phenomenon that produces lift thanks to pressure differences on either side of a rotating object"
The use of 'lift' in that sentence is a bit confusing since AFAIK lift is used to describe a vertical upward force. At first read I understood that somehow the force was to lift the ship out of the water to reduce drag. As I understand it with a quick googling (Hadn't heard about Magnus effect before), it produces a force that is perpendicular to both the airflow across it and the axis of rotation, so in the sentence quoted it would make more sense to use 'force' rather than 'lift'.
Also, something I find odd... having the Flettner Rotors mounted vertically would produce motion in a horizontal plane perpendicular to the wind. So if the wind is coming directly from the left or the right would produce forward / backward motion depending on spin direction of the rotors. But that also means that there is zero force applied if the wind is directly from behind. Why not simply use a conventional sail that can generate forward motion from a larger range of wind angles?
Re: Lift??
Interesting research here https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/sailing-into-headwinds-using-transverse-axis-magnus-rotor
Armateurs?
I rather have them designed and operated by professionals.
What happened to .....
..... the [1]previous Airbus experiment to use wind for the same thing?
Did they decide the Flettner rotors was a better solution? The issue I can see with the rotors is that they produce thrust at right angles to the wind direction only. So for crossing the Atlantic (East-West or West-East) they would make best use of winds coming from the North or South.
Kites can be flown within the available wind window (according to the wind direction) and can provide thrust at an angle either side of the wind direction.
I would have thought that the two technologies could be fitted. Into a head wind neither would be of use, in a cross wind both could be used, and in a tail wind the kite could be used.
By choosing your route to maximise trailing winds you should be able to get the most out of both technologies.
[1] https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/12/20/this-huge-kite-is-dragging-cargo-ships-across-the-atlantic-ocean