METAFUEL – Maritime alternative fuels – an evaluation of technical-behavioral performance of
fire safety strategies

Background

The maritime industry plays a pivotal role in driving the green transition, aligning with global goals set by the UN, IMO, and EU for reducing GHG emissions and safeguarding our planet.

Danish maritime stakeholders, including shipowners, equipment manufacturers, and engine manufacturers, play a huge role in the ongoing green transition, promoting retrofit of existing vessels and designing new vessels employing dual- and alternative fuels. Green methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen are all promising future marine fuels as they offer significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. By embracing these three fuels, the industry can take a significant step towards achieving global decarboniza􀆟on goals and mitigating the environmental impact of shipping activities.

The primary concerns when it comes to (fire) safety in any maritime operation are the protection of human life, the environment, the cargo, and the ship. Green marine fuels, such as biofuels or hydrogen-based fuels, are new in maritime application and have different combustion properties compared to traditional and widely used fossil fuels. Understanding the fire risks associated with these alternative fuels is essential for developing effective safety measures to protect the ship, its cargo, crew members and passengers, and the environment.
The IMO and others are carrying out important groundwork, and will in time provide guidelines and empirical knowledge, in part based on the substan􀆟al experience that exists from carrying some of the fuels as cargo. But the market needs guidance now, in order to meet the demands for the green transition.

Existing guidance protocols, guidelines, regulations etc. are prescriptive and therefore not particularly adaptable to the vast change alternative fuels entail for the management and operation in the maritime sector. These are based on single fuel fires, thus overlooking the mul􀆟tude of systems alternative fuels will become a part of, where the presence of multiple fuels at once in the same system will be an everyday occurrence. Furthermore, information about alternative fuel fires and associated fire strategies is not well-established nor universal, causing increased complexity for operators and crews.

The maritime sector is currently undergoing a large-scale shiftand will for years, if not decades. That is, if companies have sufficient capital to invest in new solutions, when research and guidelines make the current equipment and training outdated. What is needed is a tangible tool to continuously adapt to changing circumstances cost-effectively.

Project

The METAFUEL project maps the three main alternative fuel types – ammonia, hydrogen, and methanol – and their known fire safety issues. The project addresses and evaluates existing methods, equipment, and strategies, conducting simulations and tests to enhance knowledge and develops a decision support method for safe implementation approaches. Further, the project provides a gap analysis of the current maritime regulations, rules, guidelines and guidance protocols from classification societies, flag states, the EU, IMO, on alternative fuels and input on how navigate within them.

The overall purpose of the METAFUEL project is to provide a decision support tool for the Danish Maritime industry that can assist stakeholder in assessing and choosing fire safety strategies for alternative fuel solutions, as well as provide equipment manufacturers and guidance providers with insight into potential gaps in the market. METAFUEL addresses the three main alternative fuels that are in play: Methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen.

The main deliverables are:

1. A matrix-based methodology that enables stakeholders to assess and evaluate the maturity and readiness of various combinations of fire safety challenges related to introducing one or more alternative fuels.

The matrix illustrates which key challenges each specific field presents, e.g. available research, legislation, guidelines, products and equipment, training and education needs, risk assessments and risk assessments methods, as well as an assessment of which challenges have been sufficiently addressed from a fire safety perspective, which have been partly addressed, and which require significant new research and development.

2. The methodology will – supported by one or more examples, selected from the matrix – demonstrate how a stakeholder in a systematic and thorough way can analyse in which areas sufficient knowledge exists, and how to achieve a satisfactory level of knowledge in those areas where there are unaddressed challenges. The methodology and the examples provide a way to populate the matrix in those areas relevant to the individual stakeholders, such as shipowners, legislators, classification societies, or equipment manufacturers. Thus, the methodology and matrix combined will serve as a decision support tool to address gaps in guidance, legislation and rules for legislators and class, and for equipment manufacturers and researchers they will serve to identify areas for product and market development. Annex 3 contains an example of how to address a set of challenges (for illustration purposes only).

The project is therefore an extension and an application of existing knowledge. DBI currently pursues projects concerning Power-to-X, and Innomission I and II1, which seeks to generate theoretical knowledge and add to the existing knowledge pool. The METAFUEL project builds upon this work to produce favourable, applicable results. This is an insight derived from a prior project called ELBAS, wherein the maritime sector expressed interest in the project’s ability to deliver practical knowledge, demonstrate solutions, and proved input for development of realistic training. Current and prior projects supplement the METAFUEL project with knowledge and experience, creating synergy across DBI’s portiolio of projects concerning fire safety, Power-to-X and the maritime sector. In a similar manner, METAFUEL will identify certain gaps where practical tests and simulations will further refine the methods.

Expected results

The expected outcome of this project is the development of a method resulting from the matrix gap analysis, outlining points of interest in regard to, individually, comparative and combined, fire safety information about methanol, hydrogen and ammonia for ships, which can be used as supporting material in the drafting of a tangible and operational method to adaptively manage fire safety issues, gaps and challenges in the long lasting implementation of alternative fuels in the maritime sector. In other words, METAFUEL intends to deliver a method for shipowners to select a future green fuel in the form of a matrix to present a gap analysis in availability of technology, regulations, etc. for various parts of the market to guide companies in choosing what to develop.

Our testing activities includes tests of currently implemented equipment and associated fire strategies. Based on our mapping, and the developed matrix and methodology, we expect to both establish an overview of equipment and fire strategies, which are effectively applicable with minor or no need for tweaking, and an overview of those, which are insufficiently supported with a need for major intervention. This will provide the shipping companies with decision support to more reliably identify gaps and choose equipment and training with low economic uncertainty and high return on investment (ROI). Besides, the Danish market for equipment and training will be able to consider the gaps and develop new products to manage alternative fuel fire safety contingencies.

There are several existing maritime regulations, rules, guidelines, and guidance protocols with a prescriptive approach from from classification societies, flag states, the EU, IMO, etc. DBI are partners with Danish Shipping and Danish Maritime, who both express concern for (fire) safety, especially for small to medium sized companies in the Danish maritime sector with limited capacity for R&D. The matrix offers a cost-effective alternative by providing a descriptive basis with the purpose of decision support. Furthermore, the METAFUEL project opens possibilities for innovation regarding equipment manufacturing and training since the matrix is descriptive and enables open-ended solutions. This will strengthen Denmark’s position as a maritime training and education hub for both domestic and international customers, seeking the newest knowledge about the current technologies and alternative fuels in relation to fire safety.

The matrix is therefore not a ready-at-hand reference book for the numerous and complete set of situations containing present issues, gaps and contingencies regarding hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol fire safety. Rather, it is an overview of selected issues and their associated solutions, as well as gaps in technicalbehavioural performance. The matrix will be incorporated in a performance-based method, for the maritime sector to make better informed evaluations of their own present technical-behavioural performance, for the sake of adapting them to the changing demands the long-lasting implementation of alternative fuels sets for fire safety.

Task partners

DBI – The Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology