In the first quarter of 2016 Thecla Bodewes Group has built a boat that can sail on both diesel and hydrogen. This has lead to the development of a boat that hardly leaves any polluting fuel traces.

This project aims to operate a barge on hydrogen and diesel to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Revolve, the Thecla supplier in UK has tested the Ford 2.2l Puma in both pure diesel and now in hydrogen/diesel hybrid mode to the standards for RCD and shown that the engine passes the required standards and has lower NOx and particulate emissions when running the hydrogen/diesel hybrid mode.

Revolve have calibrated the 2.2l Puma engine to meet the European RCD and Federal EPA Tier II running in hydrogen/diesel hybrid mode. The previous emissions level, when running on pure diesel, for NOx was 3.83g/kWhr and the new level is 2.56g/kWhr.

For particulates, the diesel-only result was 0.1521g/kWhr, the hydrogen/diesel result is now down to 0.052g/kWhr.

Additionally, validating the reduced fossil fuel usage, the CO2 figure changed from 753.6g/kWhr to 441.8g/kWhr (the diesel-only mode produces 70% more CO2 than the hydrogen/diesel results).