The other aspect the company had to pay a lot of attention to are laws and regulations. “Those regulations are not in sync with the innovations we are using. Everything in the civil service has to be settled according to the old, existing templates. That obviously does not fit with the technologies, nor with the economic models needed to make the energy transition a reality.” Heuvelman does not blame anyone personally, but the fact that so many parties are involved - the EU, nation states, organisations - makes for example the licensing procedures very complicated. However, he does expect and hope that the RH₂INE organisation in its new form will play a bigger role here.
Heuvelman does not want to comment on whether SDS will build more hydrogen fuel cell ships. “For now, we will let the Letitia sail first. It’s nice, of course, being praised for our pioneering spirit, but the bills have to be paid.” Whether it pays out depends on what you want as a society, the HTS director believes. The government has a leading role to play here. Heuvelman draws the comparison with electric driving. That transition has been taking place for about 20 years now. Thanks to all kinds of government incentives, electric driving has taken root. Governments should play the same role for sustainable inland navigation. “Everyone within the value chain needs to pick up the gauntlet, the government, shippers, consumers”, says Heuvelman. With the Letitia, at least an important step has been taken for a green Rhine corridor. Everyone agrees on that, including HTS: “This is only the beginning of a long route still to go.”
Robert Graf-Potthoff, technical inspector at Rhenus Ship Management, part of Rhenus PartnerShip
“We are not technically an official partner of the RH2INE project”, says Robert Graf-Potthoff, technical inspector at the shipping company Rhenus PartnerShip, where he is responsible for the development of low- and zero-emission ships, “but we were involved in the network at a very early stage.”
Rhenus had two reasons for this. Initially, the RH₂INE project focused very much on the hydrogen infrastructure of ports and port operators. As a result, the needs of the ‘customers’, the shipping companies, may not have been sufficiently taken into account. Several shipping companies, such as Rhenus and the HTS Group, formed a working group within RH₂INE to bring their perspectives into the discussion. The original idea of building refuelling stations in the ports that would be connected by hose to the hydrogen ships was quickly abandoned by RH₂INE. In accordance with the wishes of the ship owners, the development of a new type, that is, quickly interchangeable tank containers, started relatively early.
Thanks to funding from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs, the so-called Drive Train H₂ project started as a spin-off from this working group. The aim was to develop an emission-free, electric hydrogen fuel cell ship using German technology. In addition to Rhenus and HTS, this project group included hydrogen technology specialist Argo- Anleg, classification society Lloyds Register and hydrogen research institute ZBT at the University of Duisburg-Essen. “Over the past four or five years, we have worked to synchronise the various initiatives at the RH₂INE conferences”, says Graf-Potthoff. He emphasises that the core ideas among participants are largely the same. He, therefore,
8 • RH2INE
experiences the information exchange in this network as useful. Rhenus PartnerShip is currently building three vessels with very low emissions and electric engines. Two of the vessels, the tying barges Mannheim I + II and the motor vessel Ludwigshafen, will be equipped with hydrogen fuel cell technology, flanked by large batteries and a Stage V diesel generator that serves as a back-up energy supplier. The third ship, tying barges Wörth I + II, will be made ‘hydrogen ready’. That is, like its sister ship Mannheim I + II, it will be equipped with electric motors, batteries and the latest Stage V generators. Space has been reserved on the ship for the hydrogen fuel cell system, but it is yet to be installed. A key component of these three modern ships is the power management system, which intelligently coordinates the use of energy sources, battery storage and energy consumption depending on the sailing profile. “What I found most impressive during the test runs”, says Graf-Potthoff, “is that you don’t hear anything in the wheelhouse. That’s how quiet the ship is.”
Robert Graf-Potthoff As a large logistics company,
we also wanted to get involved in the regulatory area so that
the new drive system can prove itself and small and medium- sized companies can also join in
The Mannheim I + II at the quay.
Photo Rhenus Group
The barges Mannheim I + II will be commissioned this year (2024), even though not all systems are fully installed yet. The two sister ships will follow next year. They will be deployed on the route between Rotterdam and the Rhine-Neckar region. The trial runs already show that the ships are very emission-efficient, although there is still more to get out of them. The power management system’s software can further increase efficiency through adjustments in actual practice. The ships equipped with hydrogen fuel cells in the system will be able to operate completely emission-free on certain routes and for certain periods of time. So much can already be said.
The Mannheim I + II project was initiated by Rhenus to solve the chicken-and-egg problem posed by the new hydrogen fuel cell technology for the industry. “We said, ‘Yes, we want to build such a ship and then hope others will follow us’.”
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