Senior Thesis: Engineering a Greener Future
By Mike Cariello ‘10 & Dusty Rybovich ‘10
It is our responsibility as engineers to design a better world. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG)-carrying behemoths belch greenhouse gases across the planet, while consuming the world’s limited supply of prized and precious oil. Traditional marine diesel propulsion is ultimately an inefficient generator of electrical power — and also creates harmful emissions. We have designed an alternate propulsion plant that uses fuel cells instead of engines, and makes excellent use of the boil-off gas that naturally occurs aboard LNG carriers.
Fuel cells have been studied for centuries, but their complex nature has discouraged in-depth research until recently. Our concept plant uses a type of fuel cell already being manufactured commercially in the United States; one that is fully capable of being used at sea with LNG fuel.
When compared to LNG carriers already in operation, our system can save at least $3,000,000 per year, per ship. This savings is mostly because our vessel can make a laden voyage using only the natural boil-off gas as fuel. It also produces only 44.7% of the CO2 output, 0.033% of the NOX output, and 0.002% of the SOX output of a modern LNG carrier.
Because the technology is so new, it is unlikely to be applied in the marine industry in the very near future. However, we hope that our research will help to clarify the advantages of this revolutionary technology, and push the industry into a new age of environmental consciousness. It is our wish that through our work the industry will be inspired to allocate more resources to developing this promising idea.