Reliable, efficient, scalable and lower cost 1 MW-scale PEMFC system for maritime applications

Shipping represents over 90% of world trade and about 3% of global Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. For this reason, shipping companies are under increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprint and comply with stringent environmental regulations. This demand for sustainable solutions is driven by the EU’s FuelEU Maritime Regulation, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the Emissions Trading System (ETS). The EU ETS for maritime transport has become operational on January 1, 2024, and is going to be progressively implemented up to 2026. Currently, it applies to all large ships (5,000 gross tonnage and above) that enter EU ports, regardless of their flag. It covers 50% of emissions from voyages that start or end outside the EU and 100% of emissions from voyages between EU ports and within EU ports. Initially, covering CO₂ emissions, ETS plans to include methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from 2026. Shipping companies will then need to purchase and surrender allowances for their emissions. Therefore the sector is looking for a fast technological route to decarbonise the existing fleet, and, in recent years, ammonia and hydrogen have been acknowledged as promising green fuels to do so.

In this context, fuel cells represent a conversion technology that provides a clean, efficient, and reliable power for ships, and for this reason, over the past twenty years, there has been a significant increase in maritime fuel cell projects, exploring various fuel cell solutions. These projects span a power range from 25 kW to 3 MW and incorporate different technologies, including Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC), Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC), and Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC).^[1] Notably, running projects like HyShip (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007205) (funded by the FCH2JU) and HyEkoTank (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101096981 ) (funded by ZEWT) are integrating larger scale fuel cell systems. The former focuses on design and validation of a 2 MW fuel cell liquid hydrogen powered ship, while the latter on the development, approval and demonstration of a 2.4 MW hydrogen fuel cell system.

While these inititatives are focusing on higher Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for system integration and retrofitting, the current technological and economic landscape, particularly for scalable multi-stack fuel cell systems (FCS), still faces critical hurdles in cost, reliability, efficiency and durability. Further advancements in terms of lower TRL research and innovation efforts are hence still requred to meet the ambitious targets set by regulatory bodies and to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly eco-conscious industry. While new multi-MW size propulsion systems are needed to decarbonise maritime transport, 1 MW sized FCS could already support decarbonising ca. 30% of the global fleet and providing auxilliary power for half of it^[2]. Topic HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2023-03-02: Development of a large fuel cell stack for maritime applications stipulated “Following the validation of “marine ready” and reliable FC stacks (able to operate in multi-modal-modular systems) the proposed project should lay the foundations for future developments of fuel cell system for maritime applications”, therefore this topic represents the next logical step supporting development from stack to fuel cell system for maritime applications.

Project results are therefore expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Development of low-cost, efficient, and flexible multi-stack FCS architectures suitable for multi-MW deployments, aiming for full-scale demonstrators compatible with end-user requirements by 2030;
• Further strengthening and consolidating the European fuel cell system supply chain, thereby securing European industry’s competitiveness and strategic independence in critical technologies in a global market for large (MW) scale fuel cell systems;
• Providing more robust, durable and lower cost MW scale fuel cell systems suitable for future integration in the 10s of MW scale in maritime applications;
• Encouraging demonstrations that lead to broader local, regional, and Union-wide deployment in various transport sectors;
• Facilitating the development of and feeding into European and international regulations, codes, and standards for wide spread use of hydrogen and large scale fuel cell systems;
• Facilitating cross-sector collaboration and knowledge transfer, supporting industry-related skills, and enhancing Small and medium EnterpriseEs' (SME) involvement in the hydrogen economy;
• Improvements in design, diagnostics and monitoring procedures of FCS (also looking at innovative measuring / sensor devices at this purpose);
• Improvements of testing protocols for the quantification of FCS performance and lifetime in maritime environments, including accelerated stress tests;
• Improvement of overall system performance of FCS in order to increase the availability and durability and meet the needs of naval and maritime end users.

Project results are expected to contribute to the following KPIs of the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (JU) Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) by 2030 for maritime use of PEMFC systems:

• Fue cell power rating: 10 MW.
• Lifetime: 80,000 hours.
• CAPEX 1000 €/kW.

The scope of this topic is to develop, validate and demonstrate a reliable, efficient, and low-cost PEM based fuel cell system (FCS) with a minimum power output of 1 MW, suitable for further scaling to at least 10 MW for use in maritime applications. Fuel cell stack development and integration of the FCS in a vessel are outside the scope of the project. Proposals should address the following:

• Develop, build and validate a new hydrogen fuelled FCS with a net power output of at least 1 MW showing actual improvements with respect to SoA regarding reliability, efficiency and cost. The system may contain multiple stacks and multiple modules. The full 1 MW FCS should be demonstrated in relevant environment for at least 1000 hours, enabling to test in moisty and salty conditions and considering different air inlet temperature (to simulate different installation areas on board of vessels). A part of the system, providing at least 200 kW and operating against an emulation of the rest of the FCS, should be demonstrated for 40,000 hours by means of Accelerated Stress Test procedures. The FCS should be validated to provide power according to sailing profile/load request of a real vessel in a simulation approach;
• The FCS architecture should follow a flexible and scalable methodology, encompassing both stacks and balance-of-plant (BoP) components. The methodology should allow extension to at least 10 MW of net power output, minimise the required workload of system integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) (e.g., by exploiting pre-existing standards such as StasHH), and adapt to the requirements of different operating conditions and vessel classes.
• The project should evaluate the impact of the developed architecture on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the FCS, as well as the cost characteristics for systems up to 10 MW building on the 1 MW FCS architecture compared to currently available propusion solutions. Alternative architectural choices may be evaluated to identifying the best solutions for different market segments.
• The architecture should satisfy the high reliability requirements of maritime applications, and the system should be able to operate robustly in case of failure of single or multiple components, identifying and emulating relevant incident and accident scenarios (e.g., human error, on-board fire, collisions, bad weather conditions) that require specific procedures. Safety aspects should hence be thoroughly analysed for the architectures developed, for all relevant operations (propulsion, hotelling when docked, maintenance, etc.), producing adequate procedures, recommendations and best practices for end users.
• Develop or adapt open-source simulation tools for multi-MW Fuel Cell Systems (available e.g., from the VirtualFCS project), making them available to system integrators and OEMs to help their design activities. The tools should be demonstrated by performing dynamic simulations of the FCS and all its subsystem in its realised configuration and relevant alternative ones, scaling up to at least 10 MW.
• Develop and publish open-source control software amenable to be deployed with no or minimal adaptations on real-world vessels, using appropriate communication interfaces. The control algorithms should satisfy relevant operational requirements, such as dynamics, efficiency, reliability and safety. The software should be able to gather, process and communicate relevant data for FCS diagnostics and prognostics. Diagnostics and prognostics for the demonstrator may be developed or adapted from previous projects.
• Liaise with regulatory bodies and identify the requirements that such a FCS needs to satisfy for type approval, and what implications it has on the design methodology.

Looking at future development and on-board integration, the following activities should be envisaged:

• Scale up activities (targeting specific multi-stack FC systems sizes and cost functions), the setup of a roadmap to TRL9 and the development of potential studies for MW-scale integration on board (and FC stack/system design) are also required. At least one use case, supported by an industrial ship-owner/manager (expected to be part of the consortium or of the Advisory Board) should be developed during the project;
• Engagement of end-users is crucial to collect their feedback about the proposed FC technology, also at regulatory and non-technical level.

Cooperation with FC application in other maritime or similar projects is expected (such as StaSHH^[3], HyShip^[4], FLAGSHIPS^[5], MARANDA, ShipFC^[6], etc.) in order to start from their results on system design. The proposals should build upon project H2MARINE^[7] (HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2023-03-02: Development of a large fuel cell stack for maritime applications) which is highly complementary; liaison between successful proposals and H2MARINE is expected to ensure complementarity, leverage synergies and avoid duplication of efforts. Applicants should demonstrate how this will be achieved (e.g. by sharing members of the respective advisory boards, by organizing regular exchanges).

Proposals are expected to explore synergies with the activities of Zero Emission Waterborne Transport (ZEWT) partnership.

While designing the FCS system, applicants should apply a ‘circularity by design’ approach and assess the sustainability of the proposed solutions from a life cycle perspective (also benchmarking it with batteries and other FCs not investigated in design/demonstration). e.g., should estimate the carbon footprint expressed in gr CO2-eq/kWhel.

Consortia should involve at least one system integrator, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and end user, and consider to involve an adequate panel of stakeholders to enable identifying the best solutions for various market segments.

In addition, proposals may investigate the spillover potential of the developed FCS architectures in other sectors where MW-class FCS may be employed, such as rail, aviation or stationary gensets, and how the methodology may need to be modified to address these.

For activities developing test protocols and procedures for the performance and durability assessment of electrolysers and fuel cell components proposals should foresee a collaboration mechanism with JRC^[8] (see section 2.2.4.3 "Collaboration with JRC"), in order to support EU-wide harmonisation. Test activities should adopt the already published EU harmonised testing protocols^[9] to benchmark performance and quantify progress at programme level.

For additional elements applicable to all topics please refer to section 2.2.3.2

Activities are expected to start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

The JU estimates that an EU contribution of maximum EUR 7.00 million would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately.

The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 2.2.3.2 of the Clean Hydrogen JU 2025 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023–2025 which apply mutatis mutandis.

[1] Elkafas, A. G., Rivarolo, M., Gadducci, E., Magistri, L., & Massardo, A. F. (2023). Fuel Cell Systems for Maritime: A Review of Research Development, Commercial Products, Applications, and Perspectives. Processes, 11(1), 97. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr11010097

[2] The 2020 World Merchant Fleet Statistics from Equasis (link)

[3] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101005934

[4] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007205

[5] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/826215

[6] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/875156

[7] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101137965

[8] https://www.clean-hydrogen.europa.eu/knowledge-management/collaboration-jrc-0_en

[9] https://www.clean-hydrogen.europa.eu/knowledge-management/collaboration-jrc-0/clean-hydrogen-ju-jrc-deliverables_en