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Norwegian Company Plans To Power Their Cruise Ships With Dead Fish (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Waste fish parts will be used to power ships in a new initiative to use green energy for polluting cruise liners. The leftovers of fish processed for food and mixed with other organic waste will be used to generate biogas, which will then be liquefied and used in place of fossil fuels by the expedition cruise line Hurtigruten. Hurtigruten operates a fleet of 17 ships, and by 2021 aims to have converted at least six of its vessels to use biogas, liquefied natural gas -- a fossil fuel, but cleaner than many alternatives -- and large battery packs, capable of storing energy produced from renewable sources. Biogas can be generated from most forms of organic waste by speeding up and harnessing the natural decomposition process to capture the methane produced. Organic waste is produced by all food industries but is frequently disposed of in landfill, where it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions as it decomposes. Hurtigruten is currently building three new hybrid-powered cruise ships in Norway, to be delivered in the next three years.
It doesn't say which of their ships is being converted, so it's hard to say how much energy is required; but I think the important point is that the biogas is being produced, liquified, then used as fuel.
It's not an onboard fish-guts-to-power arrangement; it's a ship converted to run on liquefied natural gas which is provided ready for use at the dock; at least some of which is supposed to be sourced from organic waste decomposition.
That's vastly easier and more plausible. LNG is somewhat less dense than diesel; and requires more care in storage; but it's a perfectly viable fuel; and production of methane from organic waste is going to be easier and cheaper when you don't need something you can fit into a ship while leaving room for cargo and passengers. Landfills do it automatically when left to their own devices(though it's often not captured in these cases), there may be some arrangement that is preferred when methane, rather than waste disposal, is the goal.
None of this is to say that they'll actually end up carefully accounting for how much LNG they burn and ensuring it is all sourced from organic fish heads rather than ordinary natural gas; but even if they cheat on that it'll be much nicer than bunker fuel.
Actually no, MODERN landfills harvest the methane themselves to similar effect as the fish guts. That process inherently requires decomposition and is usually shielded properly from groundwater issues entirely. YMMV red states.