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Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

wsj.com

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Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#21

Post by village-idiot »

joering2 wrote: post #19

What these ships are mostly surrounded by are waterfields that go as far as you can see. Can they come up with some sort of rolled flexible solar panels that once ship goes into full sail they release their “solar tail” behind that floats on the water surface and captures sun and turns it into electricity for ships’ engines? I mean 300 meters square of solar panel should be sufficient to push the ship at its nominal…

I think the issue would be salt water. Salt water destroys everything, I can’t imagine that a PV array floating in water would have a good life expectancy.

On the plus side, if the insulation fails you could turn container ships into accidental fishing boats.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#22

Post by village-idiot »

IB885588 wrote: post #8

Another option is skysails (giant kites that drag the ship forward): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails Hopefully someday almost all ships have a mix of these things + maybe run on algae-based advanced biofuels or something like that.

Hydrogen fuel cells are looking likely. Solar will probably produce too much electricity for usage during the day, so use that spare energy to split water to create Hydrogen fuel.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#23

Post by ValleyOfTheMtns »

I've been wondering why shipping companies haven't been doing this for years now. Whenever I brought it up with friends they would say it's probably not worth the effort, but I can't see how it wouldn't be worth it. It's essentially free energy to help move the ship around. Got to say, I feel vindicated by this story.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#24

Post by alex_duf »

IB885588 wrote: post #8

Another option is skysails (giant kites that drag the ship forward): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails Hopefully someday almost all ships have a mix of these things + maybe run on algae-based advanced biofuels or something like that.

Edit: I'm wrong, see responses bellow for correction

Original message: I seem to remember (if I'm wrong please correct me) that the Magnus effect works regardless of the direction of the wind, whereas the sky sail needs the wind to be roughly in the same direction of travel.

They could be combined but as far as I understand these spinning columns are more generic

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#25

Post by IB885588 »

ValleyOfTheMtns wrote: post #23

I've been wondering why shipping companies haven't been doing this for years now. Whenever I brought it up with friends they would say it's probably not worth the effort, but I can't see how it wouldn't be worth it. It's essentially free energy to help move the ship around. Got to say, I feel vindicated by this story.

Inertia is hard to fight. Sometimes all it takes is one player in a market doing it and then everybody else follows/feels they have to also to compete.

That's one reason why Tesla was such a catalyst for the whole industry and EVs. As long as nobody else was really making too much of an effort, everybody could just drag their feet.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#26

Post by Someguywhatever »

ValleyOfTheMtns wrote: post #23

I've been wondering why shipping companies haven't been doing this for years now. Whenever I brought it up with friends they would say it's probably not worth the effort, but I can't see how it wouldn't be worth it. It's essentially free energy to help move the ship around. Got to say, I feel vindicated by this story.

Upfront cost of installation, and ongoing maintenance, and the fragility of sails at the time may have prevented them being used before now.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#28

Post by dorfsmay »

fmsf wrote: post #2

It's called the Flettner rotor, it uses the Magnus Effect. Cool stuff but not exactly new tech. It gives a nice read, here's some links to wikipedia on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship I'm curious of what will be the results.

> Cool stuff but not exactly new tech

They explain that in the article, and the fact that it newer tech and lighter columns to get a net benefit.

Having grown up in France, I knew about Cousteau's Alcyone (it was a big deal at the time) and had been wondering why it hadn't been used more since then.

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#29

Post by aberoham »

fmsf wrote: post #2

It's called the Flettner rotor, it uses the Magnus Effect. Cool stuff but not exactly new tech. It gives a nice read, here's some links to wikipedia on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship I'm curious of what will be the results.

Great video explanation: https://youtu.be/XAztqxq2z9k?t=5m50s

Re: Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers

#30

Post by cwmoore »

village-idiot wrote: post #21
joering2 wrote: post #19

What these ships are mostly surrounded by are waterfields that go as far as you can see. Can they come up with some sort of rolled flexible solar panels that once ship goes into full sail they release their “solar tail” behind that floats on the water surface and captures sun and turns it into electricity for ships’ engines? I mean 300 meters square of solar panel should be sufficient to push the ship at its nominal…

I think the issue would be salt water. Salt water destroys everything , I can’t imagine that a PV array floating in water would have a good life expectancy. On the plus side, if the insulation fails you could turn container ships into accidental fishing boats.

> Salt water destroys everything

This is the statement I hear relating to all kinds of ocean-based renewable energy ideas. Sources are never provided.

The problem must have to do with economic viability and the replacement/maintenance costs exceeding savings.

Could you supply sources to elaborate on where the break even point of solar tail (or any two other ocean renewable energy) systems would be as relates to costs and benefits?

Edit: I don't really want to argue whether or not steel rusts in saltwater. My argument was that the break-even point of a "solar tail" is dismissed out of hand without sources because of land-based technologies being considered as the only ones.

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