Design of an Ammonia Bunker Installation for Sea-going Vessels

Abstract

The use of petroleum-based fuels in the shipping sector creates harmful emissions that need to be reduced to reach climate goals. Ammonia is being considered as a possible fuel to reduce emissions, but there exist several challenges that prevent its implementation. Research into these several of these challenges is being done, but there is little research into the bunkering process of ammonia. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify an installation to bunker ammonia that is suitable for ports that handle sea-going vessels. In order to do this, requirements, functions and alternatives are proposed for this system. Subsequently, these alternatives are evaluated through an ordinal analysis and a decision is made on a configuration through the Best Worst Method (BWM). To do this, Stakeholders from the port of Rotterdam are surveyed and used as input for the BWM. A viable configuration is found that adheres to all requirements. Finally, it is concluded that the configuration is applicable to multiple ports due to the general prioritization of safety, robustness of the result and similar results between stakeholders with different secondary priorities. Furthermore, the effectiveness of mitigation strategies implies sufficiently small risk contours, to allow ports that are in close proximity to vulnerable objects to be able to build an ammonia bunker installation as well.