Bremen, January 21-22, 2025 – 14 leading companies from across Europe have gathered at the ECOMAT Center in Bremen, Germany, for the official launch of NavHyS, a European project dedicated to the deployment of liquid hydrogen in maritime applications. By bringing together expertise from the space industry, shipbuilding, transportation, and energy and safety, NavHyS aims to advance sustainable shipping technologies and support the decarbonisation targets of the EU Green Deal in this sector.
Marie-Sophie Nizou, Program Manager at ArianeGroup and coordinator of NavHyS, highlights the potential of liquid hydrogen as a promising energy carrier for shipping, particularly for the use in Service Operation Vessels providing maintenance for offshore wind farms:
“Currently, near-coast projects rely on gaseous hydrogen. For long-distance shipping, liquid hydrogen offers more advantages because of its high energy density. However, storing this fuel requires tanks capable of maintaining extremely low temperatures (-253°C). The severe constraints linked to cooling and insulating tanks on board ships are a technological challenge here.”
To address this, the NavHyS project is developing an innovative below-deck liquid hydrogen storage and fuel system, to be integrated in Service Operation Vessels. This system will be compatible with any propulsion system, supplying gaseous hydrogen at 5 bar and ambient temperature to produce from 500kW to 2MW.
Nicolas Hardouin, Program Manager at ArianeGroup and NavHyS Work Package Leader, underscores the transformative impact of this technology:
“The design of the liquid hydrogen fuel system, drawing on our experience of space system architectures and technologies and below-deck integration in the ship, represents a disruptive innovation in comparison with previous maritime projects and design guidelines.”
Over the next 36 months, the consortium will work toward key milestones to successfully develop and test the system. By the end of the project in 2027, NavHyS will deliver the approved design of a vessel equipped with a 200-300 m3 tank below-deck, carrying 12t to 18t of liquid hydrogen bunkered in less than 2 hours. This will enable a zero-emission strategy for the construction and maintenance of offshore wind farms, where the long distances to plants necessitate an operational cycle of up to 10 days, requiring large amounts of fuel.
By 2030, the project is expected to reach TRL 7-8. By 2035-2040, the technologies developed during the project are anticipated to expand to multiple EU ports, expecting deployment of 12 stations supporting 30 ships.
NavHyS is a 3-year project funded by the European Union and supported by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, with a funding of € 5M.
Valérie Bouillon-Delporte, Executive Director of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, stresses the project’s importance:
“The Clean Hydrogen Partnership is proud to support this pioneering project, which explores in-hull integration of liquid hydrogen tanks for maritime applications. NavHyS is fully in line with the Clean Hydrogen Partnership’s core mission, which is to promote innovations that drive both the energy transition and the competitiveness of European companies; it will play a crucial role in accelerating the decarbonisation of the sector while ensuring that Europe remains at the forefront of clean hydrogen technology.”
