How Micro Bubbles Reduce Costs and Emissions to Shipping – #TechBBQ 2019

This years theme of “Emerging Technologies” has given Founders an incentive to bring their idea’s to the public and investors alike.

“TechBBQ will bring on stage the entrepreneurs that are breaking down the barriers that will make “someday” today.”

My trip this year to Copenhagen, Denmark was to bring these new technologies and new way of thinking to our audience and I wasn’t disappointed.  From the outset, this event has been focused on the exhibitors and attendees.

The clear #ClimateChange ethos that almost every event I go to these days has was ever-present at ‘TechBBQ and I used this opportunity to seek an entrepreneur out whose vision also supports this.

Frode Lundsteen Hansen CEO

Marine Performance Systems

I met with Frode Lundsteen Hansen, CEO and Co-founder at the cushions in TechBBQ shortly after it opened its doors.  I came across his details in the lead up to the event and was fascinated that his company plans to add millions of air bubbles to boats that would actually help them slide through water, faster and more fuel efficiently. We eventually sat down and I asked how the concept came about and how does it actually work?

The whole idea came about because the shipping industry is very conservative and it needs to change.  Changes are not coming from within it however, it’s external.  First, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) implemented a new regulation that actually requires them to cut 85% of the sulphur levels in fuel by January 2020.  This is a significant change!  Currently, fuels are quite “dirty” and this change to low sulphur will be very expensive.

The shipping industry currently has 91,000 ships in operation, so no change like this will be overnight.  So we thought how can we help retrofit these ships and meet the new regulation in time?  We across a technology called Air Lubrication.  It’s been around for some time but not been that successful.  They thought that by simply pumping air under a ship, physics would do the rest to raise it.  However, it was proven to not work that way, it simply moved the air around the ship and up and out.  So our mission was to find a way to make the bubbles stick to the hull and that we discovered was by using microbubbles.

How A Bird Helped Boats

Frode said they took the idea of a Penguin and the wing shape they have.  He then picked a misty coloured type of plastic rectangular and a wing shape and said this would be added to the bottom of a boat hull.  Its actual size would be 80cm and 6cm high and this would be the full width of the ship.  When completed it would look like this:

A band of these would emit bubbles and every 25-30 metres they would put another band, etc.  Every Oscillator generates 20,000 bubbles per second, through 50 holes each band.  As an example on an Astromax tanker, they can generate 43 million bubbles per second, with no moving parts.

I asked if there was a tremendous amount of pressure involved in this technology, it sounded quite explosive?  He surprised me by saying they needed very little pressure indeed to generate this.  The example he gave me was to picture blowing air through a straw into a glass.  You needed a minute amount really to generate lots and lots of bubbles.  They use compressors to do exactly this.  It doesn’t self refill however, they do need a small amount of fuel to move the compressor, but not nearly as much as a system without the microbubbles.

He mentioned earlier that there were 91,000 ships that would need retrofitting so I enquired how long a boat would be out of service and at what sort of cost to them.

He said that they can do a retrofit (dependent on the size of the vessel) when the boat is in dry dock for its routine maintenance.  Which is nominally every 5 years and usually for about 14 days.  As the system, last 15 years without maintenance they have the system paid for in roughly 2-3 years.  If however the bottom of the boat is damaged and servicing is required, they have designed the system to be managed by a diver that can then service the ship in situ. They can travel to their location where ever it is anywhere in the world.

The Energy Perspective

This system can save between 6-10 per cent of net fuel usage as it reduces the drag of it which in turn, of course, is also reducing emissions.  They claim the system can offset the expense of the low sulphur fuel with the savings in usage and emissions.

Frode is travelling around the world with his system as a Scale-up and demonstrating his system at special industry events.  Starting from February next year his system will start being put onto boats in real-time, the first in Denmark.  For the first 12 to 18 months, they will then monitor the progress of the ship, including even what type of water they traverse through, to what salinity and temperature affects.  With this information, they can maintain and get the most of out of this technology.  All of this information will then be handed over to the Captain of the ship to better improve operational costs and emissions.

This was an excellent opportunity to meet a team of game changers and we look forward to their progress.

Fulko Roos COO Frode Lundsteen Hansen CEO