On Dec. 6, RINA granted the certificate of Approval in Principle for the design of Hydrogen Generation Using Thermo-Catalytic Decomposition for Marine Application use, developed by ROTOBOOST Holdings LTD at RINA booth of Marintec China, 2023.
Currently, there are technological bottlenecks for hydrogen storage on board ships, but the application of LNG as a transitional fuel for shipping decarbonization is quite mature, so hydrogen production from LNG ships should be a more viable solution on the roadmap for shipping decarbonization.
ROTOBOOST’s Thermo-Catalytic Decomposition (TCD) technology uses molten metal as a catalyst to allow natural gas to pass through the molten state metal catalyst and be cracked into hydrogen and high quality solid carbon products in a reactor.
The awarding of the ROTOBOOST Classification Society Accreditation in Principle (AIP) by RINA is a strong boost to the large-scale commercialization of low-carbon hydrogen technology in the maritime sector under the increasingly stringent regulation of emission reduction in the maritime sector, and also signifies that the two parties will jointly explore the cutting-edge technology in the field of maritime emission reduction.
Hydrogen as zero carbon fuel for sure will play a big role in shipping sector. Considering current technical bottleneck of hydrogen storage onboard and quite mature application of LNG as transition marine decarbonization fuel, hydrogen production onboard from LNG should be a much more feasible solution on the shipping decarbonization roadmap.
ROTOBOOST work with RINA for an AIP project to evaluate the onboard hydrogen production system developed by ROTOBOOST, to achieve all functional operations as its design target, with equivalent and/or acceptable level in terms of safety to the ship, persons on board and environment, comparing to traditional nature technologies.