Maersk's multimillion-dollar investment project in Spain, in e-methanol production plants that would be used as fuel in its fleet of cargo ships, has surprised both its scope and volume of investment and the fuel to which it refers .
Currently and for decades, the vast majority of large cargo ships use various kinds of fuel oil (fuel or fuel oil) as fuel, the most common of which is number 6, which is known as bunker fuel or bunker 6 This fraction of oil is the densest (viscous) and polluting, highlighting the high sulfur content of most of its formulations. The combustion of this fossil fuel in ships, of course, is one of the sources of emission into the atmosphere of large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).
International regulations for the reduction of air pollution and the fight against climate change are forcing the naval sector, and especially cargo ship owners, to look for fuels with less environmental impact.
There are several alternatives under study and one of them is methanol, methyl alcohol or burning alcohol, as this flammable and colorless liquid was popularly known (very toxic if ingested).
Methanol offers several advantages as an alternative fuel for maritime transport to fuel oil, and in comparison with other possibilities under study such as liquefied natural gas, ammonia or hydrogen.
In addition to being easy to handle, low in toxicity and low in hazard, methanol remains a liquid at ambient temperature and pressure and therefore allows conventional storage and bunkering to continue to be used in ports and ships with few modifications. There is already a range of reliable dual-fuel ship engines on the market (which can run on fuel oil or methanol, or mixtures of both) that offer operators the flexibility they need to react to changes in environmental regulations and availability. made out of fuel.
E-methanol or green methanol is methanol that has been produced through processes with low polluting emissions or greenhouse gases, or even being considered 'zero emissions' (neutral in net emissions).
Green methanol can be made, for example, from biomass gasification or renewable electricity; as would be the case of mixing green hydrogen (produced by electrolysis with renewable energies) and carbon dioxide (CO2) captured or extracted from the atmosphere.
Even if the production process is not carbon neutral, e-methanol would provide shipbuilders with a gradual transition or adaptation to increasingly stringent environmental regulations. This gradual process, moreover, would make it possible to adjust the investments required to introduce modifications to the current fleet or the construction of new vessels.
