New engine from Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce has launched the world’s first high-speed marine engine in its performance class to operate exclusively on pure wood alcohol for a potentially CO₂-neutral propulsion system.
Maritime transport represents 90% of global commercial traffic, with almost 100% of this volume running on diesel.
As mentioned by , it is not surprising that it is responsible for a considerable percentage of global emissions, including 3% of greenhouse gases, 13% of sulfur oxides and up to 30% of nitrogen oxides.
Although reducing these emissions is beneficial, the truth is that diesel is cheap, energy dense, has a lower risk of fire and is available worldwide. Furthermore, diesel engines are thermally efficient, powerful, reliable and have much lower maintenance costs than other types of engines.
This means the bar is very high for any alternative fuels.
Rolls-Royce wants to change paradigm
Together with Woodward L’Orange and the technology and research center WTZ Roßlau, Rolls-Royce set out to create a motor marítimo that can work exclusively with pure methanol.
In addition to potential carbon neutrality, methanol promises much lower levels of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and soot particles, while also being biodegradable and easy to store.
Details of the prototype engine have not yet been released, but as New Atlas explains, given that it is intended to align with the company’s plan to introduce a dual-fuel engine to ease the transition to a methanol infrastructure, it is likely to be a variant of one of Rolls-Royce’s existing high-speed mtu engine platforms, such as the 4000 Series.
“This is a true global milestone. To date, there is no other high-speed engine, in this performance class, that runs exclusively on methanol”, praised the CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG, Jörg Stratmann, quoted by the same magazine.
A demonstration concept for the engine is planned later this year.
