I would like to know if there is much difference between carbon emissions for large ships, 100 to 200 tonnes, and whether the most efficient ships are very costly.
I can tell you that all oil burning cargo ships are highly polluting. The factoid I've heard is that the 10 largest cargo ships produce more sulfur pollution than all the cars in the entire world. This I believe, but we must bear in mind that ships burn the most dirty oil - in english called 'bunker fuel', and gasoline engine cars maybe don't produce much sulfur. Cargo ships often calculate oil consumption on 100s of gallons per hour! So efficient or not, oil burning ships are DIRTY. For decades there has been an ongoing minority research in wind driven cargo ships, with many design variants. It has been shown that such systems, as auxiliary systems, can reduce overall oil consumption substantially (ie 25-30%). We can only hope such technology is adopted - soon.
There's this solution for cargo ships, but I don't know how many users are for this technology.
http://www.skysails.info/
Yes, there are several wind solutions, including kites. savonius rotors, wingsails, and modern square rigs (ie maltese falcon). A lot of research but not much uptake afaik,sadly.
Hi. Big cargo ships are highly polluting because they used the least refined petroleum, yet they use the most efficient two stroke diesel engines that exist. For a review on this I would suggest Smil's "Prime movers of globalization", which gives a detailed account of efficiencies of different sizes.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Econ
- Manufacturing