Archipelago Yachts is convinced that methanol is the key to a cleaner, greener future and has designed a long-range power catamaran to prove it, reports Hugo Andreae
Stephen Weatherley is a man on a mission. As well as being the founder and CEO oof Archipelago Expedition Yachts, a British-built range of aluminium motor catamarans, he’s also trying to resolve the intractable issue of how to make offshore motor yachts greener. “There are currently five possible green fuels,” points out Weatherly, succinctly. “Hydrogen, ammonia, LNG (liquid natural gas), batteries and methanol. Ammonia and hydrogen are difficult to store on board a boat, LNG is a fossil fuel so emissions reductions are limited and batteries don’t have the range to power a true offshore vessel. That leaves methanol as the only viable fuel.”
POWERED BY METHANOL
He’s not alone in coming to that conclusion. The shipping industry is already adopting methanol as the fuel of the future. According to the Norwegian classification body, DNV, there are now 228 methanol dual fuel-powered ships on order, with methanol overtaking LNG as the green fuel of choice for container carriers.
The reason it also makes sense for leisure boats is because methanol is a liquid rather than a gas, meaning it’s easier to transport, store and distribute using existing infrastructure. And it can be burnt in conventional combustion engines, either in combination with fossil fuels like petrol and diesel, or on its own, with only minor adaptations. During the 1970s fuel crisis up to 20,000 methanol-fuelled cars were in use on US roads, while in the 1980s and 1990s small amounts of methanol were regularly blended into European petrol supplies.
Now Weatherly wants to demonstrate that it works just as well for boats, with a productionready design for a 63ft methanol powered explorer yacht. Called the Archipelago zero.63, it is fuelled entirely by methanol (unlike ships which burn a mixture of diesel and methanol) but has two different means of consuming it. For low-speed cruising up to 10 knots, a methanol reformer splits the liquid fuel into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is then fed into a low-pressure buffer tank before passing through a fuel cell to generate electricity for the two 25kW electric motors and a relatively small 100kWh battery bank. When more power is needed, the methanol can also be burned in a pair of specially adapted 360hp direct injection combustion engines, enabling faster cruising speeds of up to 22 knots.
FAST AND CLEAN
The beauty of this parallel hybrid system is that it gives all the benefits of an electric vessel, such as silent operation and fewer emissions, without the drawbacks of limited speed and range. Weatherly says the
