Concept Design of Low Emission Fuel Cell based Ship Propulsion System for Maritime Defence Export Industry

The current trends in international oil prices and general consensus depicts that the peak oil production has been attained
and projects a dramatic increase in fuel costs over next 50 years. Moreover, in a bid to curtail oxides of sulphur & nitrogen
in fuels, ever tightening emission regulations are being applied to international shipping, with further proposal to impose
‘Carbon Levies’. All these factors combine to inflate the through life cost of marine vessel ownership. In particular,
warships are prone to uneconomical propulsion plants and operating profiles. Therefore, future designs should be low
carbon emission vessels. There are a few giants in defence maritime sector who build warships and export them to other
countries. Due to increasing emphasis on low carbon vessels in future, these companies will have to build low carbon
affordable vessels for export market. Numerous conflicting requirements and tradeoffs between low emissions and export
quality are the major challenge. In here, the main conflicting areas are; operating profile, ship’s speed, fuel type and
number of personnel. This paper reviews the need of low carbon vessels in maritime industry defence sector in particular.
The authors have reviewed the conflicting requirements and tradeoffs during the development of a low carbon vessel
with export capabilities. The study explores export market and requirements of different navies in terms of size,
capabilities, etc. Also, this paper elaborates a novel concept to use fuels cells as the propulsion system for new low
emission ship.