General Boat Articles

Yanmar and Toyota Complete First Trials of Hydrogen-Powered Boat

The boat is the first with hydrogen power to be approved by the Japanese government.

Yanmar and Toyota have announced they have completed the first sea trials of a boat powered by hydrogen fuel cells off the coast of Kunisaki in the Oita Prefecture in southern Japan. Japan is very intent on developing hydrogen as a fuel, finalizing its Basic Hydrogen Strategy in 2017 with the goal of establishing the country as ‘a world-leading hydrogen-based society’.

New Boat

The Mirai hydrogen fuel cells have been installed in a wide-body Yanmar EX38A ‘fishing cruiser’, according to the website plugboat.com. The model was introduced in 2016 for deep-sea fishing and has been designed to accommodate 12 passengers. She’s 40’ (12.4 meters) long with a beam of 11’ (3.4 meters) and weighs in at 7.9 ton.

For these tests, A 250-kW electric powertrain replaces the usual, slightly larger (265kw) Yanmar 6CXBS-GT diesel engine. The dual polymer electrolyte fuel cells are fed by 8 tanks of hydrogen at 70MPa.

 

The new technology was developed by Yanmar and Toyota.

 

One of the challenges for new technology and fuel sources in boats like this is getting government approval. A similarly sized deep sea fishing boat in Canada was the first in that country to be given the green light for its lithium-ion battery system. Yanmar says its boat is the first to officially comply with Japan’s safety guidelines for hydrogen fuel cell vessels.

Yanmar and Toyota didn’t provide any results in the announcement of these sea trials. They did announce plans to scale up the system by adding more fuel cell units with a goal of deploying it in larger vessels  by 2025.