Collaboration for Hydrogen Retrofits to Decarbonize Maritime Vessels

Shipowners in the maritime sector are exploring solutions to extend the service lives of their existing vessels as they work towards meeting IMO decarbonization targets. Lomar Shipping’s innovation arm, lomarlabs, has partnered with a startup called Newlight to develop hydrogen retrofits for ships. The goal is to decarbonize vessels ship by ship by integrating hydrogen as a fuel source, offering a practical and immediate solution to reduce emissions without the need for a complete overhaul of propulsion systems.

Newlight has developed a dual-fuel retrofit technology that allows existing diesel engines to operate on a hydrogen blend, potentially reducing fuel consumption by up to 20 percent. This partnership aims to test the concepts using a vessel within the Lomar Shipping fleet, with workshop trials demonstrating potential savings of up to 30 percent. The collaboration will focus on retrofitting conventional diesel engines to operate on a hydrogen-diesel mix, with a pilot installation scheduled for summer 2025 to collect data and conduct sea trials.

In addition to the hydrogen retrofit project, lomarlabs is involved in various other initiatives to promote sustainability in the maritime industry. These include efforts to capture CO2 emissions from vessels, reduce methane in the atmosphere, develop autonomous magnetic crawler robots for hull cleaning, and implement AI for autonomous navigation. Another project in their portfolio is the CargoKite concept, which aims to transport goods on autonomous ships propelled by a high-altitude wind kite system.

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