Floating renewable energy hubs for maritime applications

Decentralised and distributed floating/stationary green methanol production hubs for offshore maritime vessel fuel refilling. Why methanol? Methanol has the potential to be a 'C neutral' fuel used in fuel cells to power electric engines.

How could the methanol production process be powered?
- floating wind, wave and solar offshore energy production

https://noviocean.energy/technology/
- powering and integrated with a floating/stationary platform for

• 'Direct Ocean Capture' (DOC) of CO2 (MIT)

• direct seawater electrolysis for green H2 (various electrode tech/systems available)

• methanol formation combining the CO2 and H2->CH3OH

Alternatively, there could be a direct solar-powered process producing methanol directly from seawater

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/er.4627

How could it work?

- maritime vessel refuelling offshore, possibly in harbours eg.floating rafts or en route along a shipping lane at ?abandoned oil rigs or artificial islands with probably more options too!

NOTES

Probably better than the kelp biomass pellet/TLUD idea previously blogged.

Could open up more shipping routes.

Could use smaller freight ships with less range.

'Fill her up with green methanol?'

If you can refuel planes in the sky, why not ships at sea?

This idea, though half-baked but I believe conceptually gold, could solve many logistics problems.

Maybe anything could be moved anywhere while being globalisation agnostic. But ideally, problems could be solved with In Situ Resource/Renewables Utilisation but in many cases a combination of global logistics and ISRU would be needed.

Regarding biochar kiln logistics, for eg., what is the most efficient way/route to export 'Green steel' eg. Corten from South Australia into Bolivia via Northern Chile?

In the case of corten, at the source, the corten could be produced from greener mining eg.machinery electrification, and green steel production eg.Green Hydrogen magnetite reduction, along the trade route, the fuel used is 'green methanol', at the destination, a fabricator makes a kiln (local jobs), eg., a Flame Cap 'Algorithm' Panel Kiln, and the biochar is produced in the kiln In Situ/on location where the waste biomass is located (minimal biochar logistics Carbon footprint).

OR POSSIBLY EVEN BETTER

Another application of the noviocean tech could be for maritime vessel (eg.electric powered catamaran with SSBs) battery charging in harbours or even further out, integrated with floating offshore wind energy platform tech, using again, a combination of wind, solar and wave energy but for temporary vessel docking and charging. For eg., anyone fancy an electric catamaran ride around Australia? Or even for public transport or tourism links along smaller distances, not necessarily just between capital cities. A network of the floating renewable energy hubs/recharge points could be built around the country's coastline - a lot of investment would be needed but if it worked - Awesome!! And that's just Australia...please get in touch if you're interested.

For now, that's the best I got.