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China Has Launched the World's First All-Electric Cargo Ship (futurism.com)
slash.jit writes:
China has launched the world's first all-electric cargo ship. It can travel 80 kilometers (approximately 50 miles) after being charged for 2 hours. As noted by Clean Technica, 2 hours is roughly the amount of time it would take to unload the ship's cargo while docked. Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
Wind powered ships with sails and shit
Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
http://www.chinafaqs.org/issue/coal-electricity
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
The article should have mentioned that.
As of 2016, it was down to 2/3rds. Like everywhere else, China's grid is changing fast.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
I did notice that your graph mentions that only about 4% of that power comes from Wind and only 1.1% comes from solar. The next biggest chuck of it is coming from hydroelectric at 19.7% I guess you think building a shit load of new dams doesn't come with it's own serious problems. And that's before we get into the major issue that Chinese construction techniques and poor safety records.
Yes, because internal combustion engines are made from fairy dust, and petroleum appears out of thin air.
People who complain about the horrors of lithium mining simply demonstrate that they have no clue how lithium is actually produced. The majority of the world's lithium supply is produced from salar brine. Look at it. The horror. The horror, right? They pump brine up to the surface into ponds, let it dry out to deposit unwanted salts (leaving a lithium-rich concentrate), then send that for refining. On many salars, the entire salar floods annually, wiping out the evaporation ponds, which they have to rebuild. Nature literally reclaims the "mine" annually. Its hard to picture a less environmentally impacting resource production process.
The remainder of lithium is produced from spodumene. Spodumene mines are listed as having no particular environmental impacts associated with them apart from the general impacts of hard-rock mining; the largest impact risk is listed as suspended solids in waterways - aka, silt from the rock crushers. Which is a risk from anything that crushes rock.
Do I even need to mention that there's not actually that much lithium in lithium-ion batteries, or that - as large boxes full of useful minerals - recycling rates will be nearly 100%?
And coal is in the progress of being replaced with solar and wind, whether you like that or not. In China, in the EU, and in the US. Some places have some other types of power that are also on the rise - for example, in the US it's "wind, solar, and natural gas" - but coal is in a death spiral everywhere.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Nuclear has been restricted to shipping that either requires very long deployment times or very high power outputs simply because it's too expensive for general shipping use.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Adding more battery packs also leaves less space to carry cargo, though.
If it's within 50 kilometers build railroad track, possibly with overhead wires for powers. Seems to me it would be much more efficient, and cheaper.
Then again, I write low level software like device drivers, so WTF do I know about hauling cargo anywhere?
While you are correct that the Lenin generated electricity which powered motors, the SS Savannah used steam from the reactor to power a turbine that directly drove the propeller shaft.
But the new thing is that stored electricity is driving this ship, not electricity generated on-site, as is done on diesel-electric locomotives. And almost all ships use electrically driven bow thrusters, and driving ships using electric azimuth pods is also common where careful controlability is required.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
While the electricity to charge the ship might be from coal at the moment there are three huge advantages to an electric shipping vessel.
First being that an electric ship doesn't care where it gets the electricity from so it can be charged from what ever source is available, be it solar, wind, nuclear, petroleum diesel, gas or coal. with the alternatives being switched into service as available without needing to refit the ship.
The second, and in my view best, advantage of an electric ship is that it moves the pollution source from a moving point source with limited area for emission scrubbers to a fixed point emission source with plenty of room for scrubbers that can deal with the soot, CO2 and other exhaust gases of whatever fuel is being used.
Third, there is no longer a risk of diesel fuel being spilled into the river should the ship be damaged.
Same things can be said about any electric vehicle.
A vehicle is not its fuel/battery; you have to look at the whole picture. When you electrify a vehicle of any kind, you add some things and remove others (and also change how it's built - batteries add some structural support and can be located anywhere, which frees up design constraints in other regards). As an example, the Model 3 SR is almost the exact same weight as the similar-powered, similar-sized BMW 330i.
If you tried to make, say, nonstop transpacific cargo ships with li-ion batteries, that would be a non-starter. Even nonstop transatlantic would be priced out of the market, with huge capital costs and low cargo capacity. However, for legs under around 2000km or so, electrified freight shipping should be highly competitive. I don't expect it to take off quickly, if only for the reason that it'll take time for battery production to scale up that far. But already it should be a winner from a cost perspective. That doesn't mean you can't do transoceanic shipping - you can - but it also requires deepwater wind and/or floating solar (and / or, obviously, island stops).
There are a couple interesting side benefits as well. One, ports have to have large battery buffers (several to several dozen GWh for a port dealing with large cargo ships), which trickle charge from the grid and use that to surge charge ships. But these buffers do double-duty; they'd also buffer generation and demand fluctuations onshore, to a tremendous degree. In an emergency you could even have ships haul energy over a several hundred kilometers to places in power emergencies; when you run the numbers, you find that the rent on the ships should be quite justifiable if there's a power emergency somewhere (such as after a natural disaster). A large cargo ship might carry a gigawatt hour or so each, which is massive.
Another side effect relates to design. You can use as many, smaller propellers as you want (to gain this advantage, some ICE ships run generators alongside / instead of direct drive, just to be able to do this), since efficient electric motors are much more compact and easier to locate anywhere vs. ICEs. This helps lower your draft (shallower ports become more accessible) and makes the ship much more maneuverable. The extreme end is that of azipods - electric motors on azimuth mounts which can rotate any direction as needed. An increase in the number of propellers also increases ship resilience against accidents / damage.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Do all of you people who keep proposing this stop and wonder why almost nobody in the industry ever takes this concept seriously? And the few that did went out of business or stopped doing so?
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
A large portion of China's solar power deployment is west of the industrial heartland, in the high deserts, connected to cities by HVDC lines. Furthermore, solar panels don't "breathe"; most pollutants don't affect them, and nor do they care about whether PM is fine/health effecting, or natural coarse PM blown up from the ground. Solar farms are cleaned regularly for a reason.
Whether you like it or not, this is happening. Already is happening, continues happening, the rate keeps accelerating, and the fundamentals support the rate to continue accelerating. The sooner you get used to these facts, the better.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
So has China, like the rest of the world, stopped building coal-fired power generators?
Ken
They're not stupid, you know.
They probably have a windmill generator on the roof, so as they speed through the ocean the wind recharges the batteries. If they go super fast, the extra generated power is used to create bitcoin, which in turn pays for the cost of the batteries and windmill.
Very clever those Chinese!
...omphaloskepsis often...
You mean like the vast majority of posts on every Internet venue everywhere these days? One must remember that millenials never grew up. They *are* self righteous, petulant, ninth graders.
Feeding slaves is expensive, unless they learn to eat coal.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Re-read and try again.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
I understand the poster's frustration, but there are lots of great reasons to use coal as a load for the first test of a rechargeable ship. (I refuse to call it an electric ship, there have been diesel-electric propulsion systems on ships, as railway locomotives, for decades.)
You don't test your new server in production on your client's most important website, right?
If the rechargeable ship works out - no battery fires, especially! - then it might start to be used to carry heavier or more valuable cargo, like iron ore, then maybe even refitted for something else.
And if the technology works out, the rechargeable ship would be *amazing* for a short-hop ferry service, especially in an urban area where air pollution is a problem.
Ya gotta be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is at the crawling stage. But it's encouraging.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
1) It's not even remotely close to the limit of what's possible. Within orders of magnitude.
2) It's designed for a specific, 50mi trip, not go to on arbitrary routes. Most coliers are.
3) It probably was pretty darn cheap. The battery should be around $300k, which for a collier... that's nothing.
4) Staffing should be the same or less. There's not much really to operate.
5) It should be significantly cheaper per unit distance traveled; electricity is cheaper than oil, by a good margin. It should also be more maneuverable.
6) Only 2/3rds of Chinese electricity is coal, and that number falls every year.
7) A battery of this size should be about 8 cubic meters. Hardly "hull fulling".
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
I wonder why they did not put solar panels on it. That may not provide all required energy, but it would reduce the frequency of battery recharge.
Run the propeller with waste heat from the bitcoin miners.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
You just need very thick steel plates on the stern and a bunch of atom bombs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Ok, I looked up that river and I am sorry but if that is the definition of a river then I'm renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Mississippi River. 1,000+ miles!
Not laying any blame at your feet, heck it is shown on Google Earth just as you describe.
Caution: Contents under pressure
It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
Ah, you are right. Fooled by a damned stock photo :(
You'll have to apply my facetious idea to a future electric container ship. Then it will make more sense. In that scenario, you might change battery capacity to suit the route to next be embarked on. More importantly, you might change battery charge quickly rather then charging the batteries in place; you would charge the batteries on shore using the cheapest power source available, when available, and install them on the next ship to arrive.
ALL solar systems are very much affected by particulate matter in the air
Are you really pointing out the fact that solar panels are adversely affected by the very air borne particulate matter that they help to eliminate? Really?
Thankfully, electric motors powered 100% by coal power plants still produce far less CO2 than diesel engines on board ship.
Do all of you people who keep proposing this stop and wonder why almost nobody in the industry ever takes this concept seriously? And the few that did went out of business or stopped doing so?
You mean, the electric shipping industry? I have no idea what you're talking about. Care to elaborate?
Yeh, its not like water ever just falls from the sky, and cleans the panels.
3 years in im still getting full output from my panels, which have never been cleaned other than by nature.
They produce all my power needs, including Air cond.
Hoe are thing back in the 20th century?
How is this better? They will use a lot of fossil fuel produce the batteries. It is a nightmare to dispose of the batteries when they go bad. .And they are recharged with power made with fossil fuel. Beyond Stupid.
Not everything fits into a container for rail transport, onto the back of a truck.
Tourism in nice quaint lake area with new gov regulations about not having more pollution.
Buy a ship from China and impress local regulators with no more local pollution.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Probably because building a railroad is uneconomical for the quantity of coal they're planning to move. Not because the *track* is expensive, but obtaining the land for 50 km of railroad could be pretty expensive in some places compared to building what is in effect a very *tiny* bulk carrier that operates on the existing river channels.
Also because the operation of this particular ship is a step toward gaining the experience they need to build more capable vessels. State supported Chinese industries often take a longer term view of projects like this than western pure private enterprises would.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
Wait till he finds out that the ships used to transport lithium-ion batteries are fueled by elephant tusks and rhino horns.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
e retards.
Battery swaps instead of charging while unloading. The OP made the statement "Exchanging batteries maybe made in less than 1 minute, faster than recharging them (1 minute vs 2 hours)." without reading the article that it states the 2 hours charge time is approx the same time as unloading time. EV battery swaps will take a lot longer than the 1 minute unless he's talking about swapping the battery out of his torch. Large battery swaps will be a nightmare.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Wind powered ships with sails and shit
Next? There are wind powered ships with sails and shit under development as we speak. The concepts range anywhere from augmenting normal diesel propulsion with computer controlled sail to a ships with a super light shape optimised hull, a battery-electric propulsion and a combination of solar panels and computer controlled sails. Some of these things look like something straight out of the 5th element's Fhloston paradise. The shipping companies have expressed interest because of the potential fuel savings. Even upgrading a traditional diesel powered cargo ships with some form of computer controlled auxiliary sail can cut fuel consumption by between 5 and 15% and if you think about it, spending weeks sailing blue water with favourable winds blowing your way and not using them is kind of stupid.
Cargo ships are the most efficient way to move cargo. They are four times as efficient as rail, and 15x as efficient as trucks.
Using oil to power them is pretty sensible, and furthermore the pollution is emitted at sea, where the concentration of such pollution is low. It's hard to imagine that any non-solar/wind way of powering these rechargeable ships would be more efficient than simply using oil.
So this sounds like a stupid idea.
We need to solve the problems of
* pollution in built up areas - this doesn't do that
* overall emission of greenhouse gases - the effect would be marginal
If you want to improve the efficiency of ship - and we do, but it's not high priority - fly some kites. We know they work, and they can be easily added to the existing fleet.
Electric power for ferries might be useful. But offshore bulk carriers - not so much. Way better bang for the buck to work on trucks, buses and delivery vans.
"Cats like plain crisps"
The chances are each port it docks to unload will have a charger. The Orkney Islands in the UK are starting out along this route. They produce excess renewables so they use it to create hydrogen. Its early days so baby steps at the moment http://www.surfnturf.org.uk/
You can watch this and it will give you an overview of what the EV ship idea is all about (its the Orkney solution). https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
the route to a safe and clean renewable future is not an overnight one. Your expectations are too high for an overnight replacement of dirty fossil fuel power. They didn't have fossil fuel power in place overnight to supply the whole nation either when they built the first coal fired power station.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
" Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal."
'Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.'
Indeed. Luxembourg has the first solar electric ferry and it is used to transport gas-guzzling cars on the other side of a river.
https://www.wort.lu/en/luxembo...
And if you are island hopping to deliver? Seems like their solution for a particular problem they have otherwise they'd use existing tech.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Yep, the Lenin was the first propelled ship to use non-fossil fuels. Without resorting to massive batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Plus there were other battery powered boats before the Chines one.
Someone should stuff your face in a coal chute and hold it there while someone else lights a match and tosses it in. You are stupid, bigoted, and generally worth less than the shit you made in your underpants.
Wait until you find out that engines need maintenance. Then I'm sure you'll campaign for the complete cessation of movement of people and cargo because it would never work right?
Right. All of the supermassive solar and wind farms that can be seen from space are fakes, and nobody noticed.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Yeah, about that... Let's look at this "China FAQs" site you linked to. If you just go to the front page we see a series of stories...
Chinaâ(TM)s Decline in Coal Consumption Drives Global Slowdown in Emissions
China is Leaving the U.S. Behind on Clean Energy Investment
So according to those two (literally the two most recent headlines) China is actually doing quite a lot to stop using coal (its consumption actually peaked a few years ago and is in decline), more so than the world's other big polluter in fact.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
So what's your point? That China can never experiment with new motive power sources because coal?
That the laws of physics tell us that only coal generated electricity can run this ship?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They're not stupid, you know.
They probably have a windmill generator on the roof, so as they speed through the ocean the wind recharges the batteries. If they go super fast, the extra generated power is used to create bitcoin, which in turn pays for the cost of the batteries and windmill.
Very clever those Chinese!
Good to see that someone figured it out!
Anyhow, I'm impressed with the high dudgeon humor - well played, sir.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I love your idea of using cargo ships as emergency power stores and producers.
You are just an idiot who knows nothing about the topic ... e.g. like to explain what toxic stuff is produced and deposed?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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Translation: Your logic abilities are weak.
It is easier to load and unload a cargo ship than a train with same amount of cargo.
That actually should be a no brainer.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
â'AÂ=>â'B
Translation: Your logic abilities are weak.
Oooh you can translate unicode? You should get a job at slashdot.
You're ability to be snarky doesn't change the fact that you missed the point. Too bad.
Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
Your own link says 69%.
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Heh ironic...
1. Load ship w/ coal; charge batteries while loading.
2. Go 50 miles.
3. Use coal to generate electricity to recharge batteries.
4. Repeat step 2-3 until coal is used up.
5. Die of lung cancer because this ship is way too little way too late.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The reason is that it boat will deliver coal to seven current coal plants and probably more on the way and those coal plants are on different sides of the water. A train would require bridges and other infrastructure, hilly area, so the boat is the easiest way.