The maritime industry is under increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with global decarbonisation targets. In this context, the project investigates the feasibility of integrating fuel cell (FC) technology into marine vessels as a sustainable alternative to conventional fossil fuel-based propulsion. Fuel cells are particularly well-suited for operations in emissions-controlled areas and ports, offering a zero-emission solution that addresses growing regulatory and environmental demands. Fuel cells deliver several key advantages over traditional marine engines, including higher energy efficiency, reduced noise and vibration, and compatibility with renewable energy systems. However, their adoption in shipping has been slow, hindered by concerns over technical performance, cost-effectiveness, safety, and regulatory compliance. This project aims to bridge these knowledge gaps through a comprehensive feasibility study of fuel cell application in the maritime sector. Led by a UK-based consortium---Logan Energy (technology provider), CMAL (shipowner), Lloyd's Register EMEA (classification society), and the University of Strathclyde (research institute)---the project will assess fuel cell integration into a selected case study vessel. It will evaluate various aspects including technical design, lifecycle costs, operational feasibility, safety risks, and environmental impacts. The study will benchmark different fuel cell technologies, such as PEMFC and other variants, against conventional propulsion systems to identify the most promising solutions for specific vessel types and operating profiles. It will also analyse the regulatory landscape, focusing on safety compliance and necessary adaptations to existing rules for hydrogen and fuel cell systems onboard ships. One of the project's core goals is to provide clear, evidence-based guidance to support shipowners and technology providers in adopting fuel cell systems. The research will highlight the potential environmental benefits---such as significant reductions in GHG emissions---and assess how these systems can scale for wider industry use. Ultimately, this initiative will deliver critical insights into the integration of fuel cell and alternative fuel technologies, e.g. hydrogen, in marine vessels from various perspecives. It will help inform and support the decision making of industry stakeholders, support strategic planning, and accelerate the commercial uptake of clean propulsion systems. By advancing fuel cell deployment in UK waters and beyond, the project contributes to a greener, more sustainable maritime future.

Reliability and availability of shipping vessels is critical to quality of life and impacts significantly on cost of goods consumed globally. This is because the maritime industry is responsible for 90% of global trade, hence disruptions in maritime service impacts the way we live and how much we pay for our goods. Until now, it has been difficult to predict with any certainty machinery failure in shipping vessels. This has resulted in high rate of failure in rotating lubricated machinery such as engines. The high rate of marine engine failure is the leading cause of service disruptions in the maritime industry. However, such disruptions could be avoided with early detection of engine faults ensuring that engine failure is prevented. Diagnosing early, potential failure of marine lubricated equipment such as engines is critical to operation of a shipping vessel. RAB-Microfluidics has developed cutting edge microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology to deliver real-time continuous testing and analysis of lubricating oil. Our "Lab-on-a-Chip" technology delivers oil analysis 1000x faster and 10x cheaper than the current "send the sample to the Laboratory" approach. Analysis of contaminants in engine oil, gearboxes, etc. is a well-established method of detecting problems. This procedure is called Oil Condition Monitoring. We deliver this onsite, in real time and this is a significant improvement on the current practice of sending the sample to onshore laboratories for analysis thus saving cost and improving machinery reliability and vessel availability. We combine our hardware technology with data computing by developing machine learning capabilities to utilise the big data generated from our hardware. This offers real-time continuous monitoring, early problem diagnosis, rapid decision making, enhanced efficiency and cost savings. This project seeks to develop this core technology further and build a field prototype demonstrator that integrates with a live operational marine engine. This will ensure we fully demonstrate the automation of our novel Oil Condition Monitoring process. This will be a first-of-its-kind development with potential to dramatically improve shipping vessel reliability and availability by ensuring developing faults of key equipment are identified early. If successful, our technology will herald a game changer for the maritime sector and would invariably have a ripple effect on our quality of life by ensuring reduced marine service disruptions. There is also the added possibility of such success being reflected on the cost of good we consumed due to lower marine transportation costs.

This project is a lifecycle feasibility study for Scottish Enterprise by evaluating the technical and commercial possibilities of using 'hydrogen' for zero emission ferries. While offering the roadmap for lifecycle low carbon shipping, it will propose optimal solutions for sustainable economy growth and the competitiveness. This project will produce highly reliable predictions of the costs/benefits of using future maritime fuels, offering practical insights into directing the future plan/investment for the West-Scotland shipping business. Credible business scenarios will be designed with a high-level screening of 23 short-route ferries currently engaged in 27 West-Scotland coastal routes. These routes were chosen as a representative sample for the entire West-Scotland ferry services. The project outputs will be directly fed into the CMAL's future decarbonisation plan and investment. While carbon-free fuels are in the early stages of development in the UK, there are various views on how these fuels can be produced, distributed, and used onboard for the clean shipping economy. To determine the optimal energy solutions, all credible scenarios for the upstream pathways for these fuels will be developed, based on the current and future prospected UK energy infrastructure and grids. Their technical aspects for maritime application will be investigated in consideration of safety, regulation, costs, infrastructural availability, supply chain constraints, barriers, and the downstream emission pathways to their uptake onboard. Ship conceptual design will be conducted to evaluate the systems, technologies, equipment required for onboard installation to utilize zero carbon fuels. The outputs of this project will be further prepared to assist the Scottish Government's ambition to increase low emission vessels in the publicly owned ferry fleet by 30% under the Scottish Government's Climate Change Plan 2018-2032\. Hence, project performance will be the perfect way to proceed with proposals for real application toward high technology readiness levels.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from maritime transport is estimated at around 1 Bn ton of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2 eq.) accounting for 3% of global anthropogenic emissions (IMO 2020). Emissions need to be cut by 50% up to 2050 to meet the Paris agreements (IMO 2020). Automation and digitisation have gained significant traction as enablers of greater efficiency in the maritime industry and can contribute meaningfully to reducing GHG emissions. RAB-Microfluidics have developed a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology that automates and digitises a key aspect of a shipping vessel operation -- Oil Condition Monitoring (OCM) which has the potential to enable marine engine efficiency, thereby reducing GHG emissions. OCM has remained relatively unchanged for over a hundred years with conventional wet chemistry techniques being the gold standard for industrial testing and analysis for engine condition monitoring. While these techniques deliver, robust compositional information, they are unable to provide to the desired frequency (because it is a manual process) data that can enable key insights to aid efficiencies and energy savings that lead to reduction in GHG emissions. RAB-Microfluidics lab-on-a-chip technology completely changes this as our technology automates the OCM process. Consequently, there is now the opportunity to plug that existing knowledge gap. In this project, we will integrate this technology with a live marine engine to continuously monitor the condition of engine condition during operation in real-time. Engine condition data will then be correlated with engine operation information (e.g., engine load, exhaust temperatures, shaft power/torque, engine speed, fuel pressure, etc.), performance data (e.g., energy efficiency plan, lube-oil consumption, fuel consumption etc.) and GHG emissions data to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Such automation will allow generation of continuous streams of data on engine condition to provide insights that ensure the optimisation of marine engine operation/performance, permitting energy savings which will lead to reduction of GHG emissions. This potentially creates an offering that does not currently exist. This automation of the OCM process permits a potentially disruptive offering that transitions businesses from reactive to predictive operational strategies with the added potential to open up a £400Mn OCM automation market. This will be a first-of-its-kind development with potential to impact the reduction of GHG emissions. If successful, our technology will herald a stepwise change for the maritime sector helping maritime companies transition to next zero emission.