Dirigibles! Solar on top, hydrolysis for lifting gas, electric and wind for propulsion. Just don't cover the skin in rocket fuel this time...
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Solarpunk technology
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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
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That... would actually make a really rad scene, that might be my next quick photobash. I keep getting reminded that dirigibles have real solarpunk potential, then forgetting about them. I guess we can skip the rocket fuel
Hydrogen lifting gss doesn't seem like the best idea due to its reactivity and leakiness
Helium leaks just as much as hydrogen.
I think an easy solution to that is to put a neutral gas like nitrogen in an intermediate layer between the hydrogen and the air. That way there's no contact between hydrogen and oxygen gasses in the event of a tiny puncture. And the leaked hydrogen can just be replaced by freshly electrolyzed hydrogen from water, made with solar power in the mechanical room of the airship.
I think I've read that helium is a limited resource, hard to find and dependant on natural gas mining for extraction? Some kind of mining. Are there other good lighter-than-air candidates?
Helium is an inert gas. It's one of two gasses that have an average molecular velocity high enough to escape Earth if let into the atmosphere. Any terrestrial helium comes from heavy elements radioactively decaying deep in the earth, and is trapped in the same rock formations that collect petroleum.
Hydrogen is also capable of escape, but reacts with ozone to create water. One of the concerns with a hydrogen economy is that hydrogen production on a global industrial scale will deplete holes into the ozone layer again.
Neon, pure nitrogen gas (air is 78% N), carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, ethylene, and methane are all lighter than air. Methane, acetylene, and ethylene are extremely flammable. Carbon monoxide, ammonia, and hydrogen cyanide are poisonous and corrosive. Neon exists in the atmosphere in small amounts but is extremely expensive to isolate and vastly inferior to helium for buoyancy. Maybe in a post scarcity society hot-neon balloons would be a thing. Hot-air balloons could also become slightly more effective if the carbon-dioxide and oxygen were filtered from the envelope.
Hear me out: solar-collector heated hot air balloons!
Yes, I know, my kid had a toy like that - but why limit this to toys? You could also use solar heat and support with other heat sources. How about a solar hot air ballon rail, where the rail is a solar collector trough that sends sunlight up to heat the air inside the dirigible?
How about hot air? If the dirigible is black, sunlight will do most of the heating.
My favourite shipping solution would be vessels pulled by large sea mammals. It sounds very far out there, but then there's a group (school? herd?) of dolphin somewhere who help people fish, there used to be a whale who helped to guide boats ... once we finally manage to talk to them maybe we can come to some kind of agreement.
Depends on the scale, for intercontinental trade we might still be stuck with big containers, while we search for ways to incrementally make them greener or faze them out with a new solution.
Trade and travel at short distances is a lot easier to deal with, and sail ship might make a comeback.
For intercontinental container ships win, in almost all cases. Efficiency scales with size (power requirements scale with cross section, n^2, while capacity scales with volume, n^3). This is part of what creates the problem with modern society, they are SO good at their role that it is cheaper to ship all around the world, than to make locally.
What we can do is remove the fuel requirements. Solar and Wind turbines can create significant amounts of power, on a ship that size. Further, classic sails can be used for direct drive, when conditions are right.
It is also one of the best case situations for hydrogen. Hydrogen storage difficulty scales with the inverse of size. Small is hard, big is easy (comparably). Hydrogen can also be made from water and excess electricity. Conveniently, container ships tend to have access to unlimited water.
An electric container ship could run off renewables, with hydrogen providing a supplemental power source. When there is excess power (e.g. at dock, waiting to use a congested area, or just running at a relaxed pace) it can be turned into hydrogen onboard. If high speeds are required, it can be supplemented by coast based hydrogen generation (either on-shore, or floating).
This is a really cool idea - I hadn't considered that there might be a way to do container ships somewhat renewably
Recently the "Canopee" has been launched.
It's a cargo ship with automatic sails that is transporting the Ariane 6 rocket across the Atlantic.
There is also this company who was doing shipping on old yatchs but the are now building a modern sail cargo boat
First of all local shipping will be a thing in solarpunk socities as well. Shipping is amazing at transporting huge things very cheaply and ferries will be around as well. Those might run electric to not be dependend as much on wind.
For ocean going vessels, I would bet on large sailing vessels using the trade winds, but also having solar, batteries and electric motors to cross areas with no or bad wind. We would likely still have weather satellites and run weather forecasts. The advantages of that are massive not just in shipping, but also for agriculture and many other things. So the ships would go for the best wind available for long journeys using that data. For going into ports electric motors would be used as well, to make it easier.
As for sailing themself, it likely would use sails connected to electric motors with some sort of micro controller making it easier. The sailing ships of old had to have a lot of sailors for the hard work of changing sails and so forth. That should not be needed in a solarpunk future. As for the masts they need to be collapseable or they need to use kites. This makes it easier to move around in port and allows for easier loading and unloading processes using containers, as the cranes need to be able to get them out of the ship. So old school tall ships would propably not be the ultimate solution.
I really like the mix of sails and electric motors for maneuvering and drive in poor wind conditions. The tech like weather satellites, GPS, and radio really would make a huge difference.
I hadn't considered the use of cranes in port, but that would be a big thing to loose. Really, containerized and palletized shipping are huge advantages we'd want to keep. I wonder what ship designs would look like, if you wanted something like a tallship in terms of size (so smaller than a massive container ship) and sail... volume? But able to access the cargo in a somewhat modern way. Maybe they really would spend some time outside the port stowing the sails and collapsing the masts before maneuvering in on electric power, maybe they'd build with a longer design or a missing mast for easier access to the hold. Thanks for talking through these!
Vegetables should be grown close to consumption. That would definitely reduce daily transport a lot.
Ships have two modes: fast and slow transport. Most is slow transport. It is fully electric, driven by solar panels installed on the ships. Fast transport is still carbon-based, but much more expensive.
I was talking about this with a friend who is very into both nautical history and modern merchant shipping and he linked me to these articles. Thought I'd include them here.
https://gcaptain.com/project-to-test-feasibility-of-sail-powered-bulk-carrier/