MOL announced a successfully conducted a demonstration experiment using the yacht “WINZ MARU” in Sasebo-city, Nagasaki in Japan
During strong wind, the yacht use wind power to generate electricity using a underwater turbine to produce and store hydrogen onboard.
Durign weak wind, the stored hydrogen is used at hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity to rotate a propeller.
Five experimental sailings have been conducted as of November 24 2021 and series of cycles has been successfully demonstrated: (1) power generation by ocean wind → (2) hydrogen production → (3) hydrogen storage → (4) fuel cell power generation → (5) propulsion by electric propeller.
At forthcoming full-scale sailing, we will accumulate and analyze navigation data in order to verify the actual performance characteristics of various equipment and the efficiency of the yacht (plant) itself and we aim to complete the demonstration experiment (Stage 1) by March 2022. As a future roadmap, we aim to create a larger scale, about 60 meters long vessel, by 2024 (Stage 2). Furthermore, we plan to develop and build much larger scale zero-emission vessel by 2030 (Stage 3).
