Yachting Intelligence - your guide to superyacht business & lifestyle » Green Technology

Sauter Carbon Offset Design introduces Black Magic, a zero carbon vessel

Yachting Intelligence — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:50:47 +0000

Sauter Carbon Offset Design introduces Black Magic, a zero carbon vessel that points to the way future tankers can reduce their GHG emissions by 6 billion tons over the next 20 year

Black Magic is a 4,000 ton Solar hybrid Vessel that reduces GHG emissions by 75 to 100% by harnessing energy from the sun, wind and waves, It features Mercedes Benz / MTU Bluetec engines to deliver the cleanest marine propulsion system the world has ever seen.

Richard Sauter head of design commented “Now that the North Pole is little more than a fragmented pile of frozen debris, cargo vessels going between Japan and Germany have cut 4000 miles off the journey. This is the good news. The bad news is that the Greenland ice sheet is likely to disappear a lot sooner than predicted”

The Independent : “For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated”

Black Maigic is the only realistic Super Green Alternative to the highly pollutant tankers in use and still being built at an alarming rate. Over the next 20 years a 75% reduction in emissions for the 16 supertankers mentioned below amounts to a 40 million ton reduction in GHG emissions..

China Daily : “China delivers world’s largest oil tanker”

The currently available green technology present in Black Magic includes:

·         Mercedes Benz & MTU Bluetec diesel electric power generation
·         Hydro and aerodynamic advances in wave piercing pentamaran hull design
·         Azimuth counter rotating CLT high torque propeller systems.
·         KER & Power sailing regeneration.
·         State of the art fully rotational Wing Sails.
·         Maximum solar cell deployment. (2,000 square meters)
·         Energy efficient equipment, including AC & refrigeration with waste heat recovery
·         Computerized energy management, maintenance & guidance.
·         Lithium UPS

Solar cells, power sailing regeneration and plug-in power sources charge a lithium ion storage system that runs all hotel services including AC, day and night, The same lithium UPS allows Black Magic to achieve her maximum speed of 16 knots and navigate harbors and inland water ways with Zero emissions

Combine the above with 300 to 1,000kws of wing sail propulsion to arrive at virtually unlimited Zero Carbon Cruising at an average speed of 10kts. (With optional Sky Sail 12 kts)

Black Magic
A Bluetec Solar Hybrid Tanker
Displacement 4,000t, Length 120m, Beam 20m, Draft 6m, Service speed 12kts,
Green power installed;
MB/MTU Bluetec Power Generation 1,200kws, Wing Sail power 300 to 1,000kws, Solar Cells 200kws, Ker & Power Sailing Regeneration 100 to 200kws

Black Magic is a 10,000 tons per year Certifiable Carbon Offset Project. As such it achieves a reduction in GHG emissions equivalent to the average annual carbon footprint of 2,500 people across the globe

For more information contact;
Richard Sauter
Email: Richard@SauterCarbonOffsetDesign.com
Website: http://www.SauterCarbonOffsetDesign.com

Luxury With a Conscience

Yachting Intelligence — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:12:41 +0000

Since Lehman Brothers sank a year ago, marinas have been awash in mothballed luxury yachts waiting for the financial tides to turn, while canceled orders have left many boat builders struggling.

Now, at suitably trimmed prices and amid signs of renewed buoyancy in capital markets, “there’s an optimistic feel about evolution in the short term, at least on the pre-owned brokerage market as well as on the charter market, » says Laurent Perignon, director of marketing at the high-end yacht broker Camper & Nicholsons International. Still, Mr. Perignon said, “we remain cautious » about the timing of a market recovery.

Yet, if plain vanilla luxury boat builders have felt buffeted, the mood at the top end of the market is very different – as reflected in the unveiling by leading luxury brands of two new yachts at the start of the Monaco Yacht Show this week.

“WHY 58×38 » is the first offspring of Wally Hermès Yachts, a joint venture announced last year between the Paris fashion house Hermès and the Monaco yacht designer and builder Wally.

“Aeon » is the concept offering this year from Feadship, the luxury yacht brand of the Dutch boatyard Royal van Lent, acquired a year ago by LVMH.

The Wally Hermès boat mimics the wide-stern triangular geometry of modern seismographic research vessels. With a beam of 38 meters, or 125 feet, for her length of 58 meters, the yacht is designed to be a luxury floating villa, “safer and more stable than a typical yacht, » said Luca Bassani Antivari, president and chief executive of Wally.

The hull form requires less power at cruising speed than a conventional boat of equal size and a diesel-electric propulsion system provides eco-friendly power, backed up by the incorporation of nearly 900 square meters, or 9,680 square feet, of photo voltaic panels that in sunny weather can drive most of the boats’ auxiliary systems.

Aeon’s designers also aim to please super-yacht owners with a green conscience. The 75.6-meter yacht has a hull inspired by the hydro-dynamics of a whale shark’s body. Again, large areas are covered in solar paneling, one of the many green power sources for the yacht.

The propulsion system is entirely electric, powered by generators running on synthetic fuel that can be produced from natural gas, biomass or algae. The engine room houses equipment to convert bio-diesel into hydrogen, fuel cells to convert the hydrogen into electricity, and batteries for power storage. Carbon dioxide, water and heat from the conversion process are recycled: an algae bio-reactor captures the CO2 and a steam turbine converts waste heat to electricity.

Not withstanding the current state of the market, Antonio Belloni, the group managing director of LVMH, says he is optimistic about the long term, sustainable growth potential of the super-yacht sector.

“The strongest brands, the brands that have the products and financial backing, will certainly emerge stronger from a phase where the market is more demanding than it had been in exuberant years, » Mr. Belloni said.

At Feadship, “there has been absolutely no cancellation of any order, » he said. The yard introduced several yachts in the past year, and it is working on more than 20 projects, representing a full order book to 2013. “So frankly, we’re very confident about the future. »

“We think that the fundamental factors that generated growth in excess of double digits for the last 10 years for the large yachts will continue to be there, » Mr. Belloni added. “I’m less sure if it’s going to continue being double digit, but I think there is still ample room for the market to grow. »

Source

New superyacht Ethereal : a quiet revolution in green technology

Yachting Intelligence — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:47:33 +0000

Ethereal : the world’s most technologically advanced large hybrid sailing yacht.

Bill Joy is one of the most gifted and successful computer programmers of his generation.

As co-founder of Sun Microsystems he helped create Java script, the programming language now used in computers worldwide.

As you might expect with such a resume, his design brief for his new superyacht was not short on ambition or innovation. Joy set himself the task of creating the most energy efficient yacht possible.

He and his wife Shannon have ploughed all their spare time in to the project — “We worked 48 hours a week for five years, on top of our normal jobs,” he said — and the results are impressive.

Heading out of the marina at Barcelona alongside Joy and his wife Shannon on their vessel “Ethereal”, we experienced a surreal moment.

We turned off both main engines. Yet, with the sails still furled, and in complete silence, we continued to glide along at 9.5 knots, with 1,500rpm showing on the bright digital displays. Standing at the helm, there was no noise. Not even the burble of a generator.

“We’ve switched Ethereal to battery power,” explained Andy, the skipper. “And I bet you didn’t spot when it happened.” He was right — there had been no perceptible transition. Now, with her versatile hybrid propulsion system proudly demonstrating one of its myriad modes, Ethereal’s Ron Holland-designed hull was being propelled using the two electric motors with power coming from its 400 kilowatt-hour (kwh) lithium-ion phosphate battery bank.

All of Ethereal’s hotel services — air-conditioning, lights, pumps and galley — were also using the same power source. Hence the eerie silence.

That may sound ingenious, and an enjoyably peaceful way to travel under power. In truth, it’s a minuscule fraction of what the owners and the Dutch builders Royal Huisman have achieved with this boat.

Joy set out to build the yacht using existing technology where appropriate, but also exploring new technologies where he thought the current ones fell short, in the realms of lighting and thermal efficiency in particular. His goals were not modest.

“Almost any system people use today, you can save half by intelligent design. Three-quarters is harder,” he informed me.

Along the way, he created the world’s most technologically advanced large hybrid sailing yacht.

So just how efficient is Ethereal? On a good day, under sail, the same electric motors that had been silently pushing us along can be used in reverse, as generators.

Think of Ethereal as a mobile aquatic wind farm. Her 1,606 sq. meters of upwind sail indirectly provides the raw energy, spinning the controllable pitch propellers in reverse as they drag through the water at up to 17 knots, directly turning the generators.

After the inevitable efficiency losses at the propeller and during the electrical conversion (minus 5kw for the cooling pumps), these generators in theory should feed around 16kw each back into the lithium-ion battery bank. That’s roughly half of Ethereal’s typical energy requirements.

Even on a bad day, tied up alongside or at anchor, so much effort has been put into reducing Ethereal’s energy consumption that Ian, the chief engineer, has found that their small 55kw emergency generator is able to handle this boat’s energy requirements at times. Put into perspective, anybody belting around in their tiny 29 foot, single 370 diesel sportscruiser, is consuming roughly twice the energy and polluting the atmosphere twice as much as Ethereal does on a ‘bad’ day.

“You get the quiet for free when you make it efficient,” Joy said.

With only the lightest breeze to push us along, we were never going to achieve the 15 or 16 knots that Andy and the ten-strong crew experienced on their passage from Palma to Barcelona. But with designer Ron Holland on board checking the sail trim, and crew member Marcus trimming the sails using Ethereal’s huge captive reel winches — all effortlessly push-button operated from the helm — we soon settled into an easy 12 knots boat speed in no more than 12 knots apparent.

Not surprisingly, with no waves to speak of and 190 foot of boat underneath us, there was little sensation of speed at first. That is, until I took the helm. As luck would have it, we experienced a sudden huge wind shift of around 30 degrees, so a rapid course correction was required. With light winds, a hydraulic steering system, plus the inertia that 472 tonnes distributed along 190 foot confers, I’d been expecting zero sensitivity and no sense of connection with the water whatsoever.

Instead, Ethereal sprang to life. Amazingly, Ron Holland has produced a 190 foot boat that responds very sweetly to surprisingly small inputs from the huge wheels. Sure, she doesn’t feel like a racing sailboat, and turning through that 30 degrees then back again soon after involved a lot of wheel spinning. But thanks perhaps to the feedback system incorporated into the steering, there’s a real sense of connection with the water.

This yacht, I suspect, is going to be a lot of fun to sail

Source

More info : http://www.ronhollanddesign.com/designer_comments_ethereal.php