For the Ligurian ports, in particular those of Savona and La Spezia, the turning point can come green thanks to the use of hydrogen. This is explained by Ugo Salerno, CEO of del Rina, a multinational company with headquarters in Genoa, which provides certification, classification, environmental enhancement, supervision, training and engineering consultancy services, in various sectors, including shipping, energy, infrastructure, construction. , logistics and transport. The group is also involved nationally and internationally in the development of technologies related to the use and production of hydrogen; among other things, it is following projects with Snam and Eni and has recently signed a collaboration agreement with Axpo Italia.
Liguria, Salerno argues, “could be a very important hub, relative to hydrogen, for ports. If we talk about green ports, there is the possibility of creating extremely effective laboratories. In particular, the Savona and La Spezia airports have nearby power plants: the first in Vado and the second a plant that Enel intends to convert to gas. The port of Genoa also has one, but it is being decommissioned ». The two Ligurian ports of call, Salerno continues, “both have a problem with regard to the cruise terminals: the one in Savona (managed by Costa) is close to the city center and the one under construction in La Spezia will also be near the town. Several ships can or can be moored at the same time on these quays ».
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Salerno’s reflection points to the fact that cruise ships at mooring must keep their generators constantly on in order to keep all the systems necessary for the operation of the hotel services on. For this reason, the presence of a power plant near the terminal would favor the use of cold ironing, that is the technique that allows you to connect the ship, with a cable, to the power of the power plant and thus to power it from the ground, allowing you to turn off the generators and related emissions. Even the cold ironingHowever, it presents some difficulties, Salerno recalls: «A cruise ship has an absorption of the order of 11-12 megawatts to be in operation, a huge power: just think that a commercial ship uses at most half a megawatt. In the presence of powers of this type, either electric cables with enormous sections, or with normal sections but with large conversion cabins, are necessary to have very high voltages, which then you have to convert to 440 volts, which is, more or less, the voltage at which a ship of that type works ».
To overcome the problem, according to Salerno, we can use “a superconductor” and a technology that “is in a non-experimental phase, because it already works, but archaic in terms of efficiency and costs. It is possible to capture the Co2 emitted by the plant through chemical or membrane systems, and with the electric energy to feed an electrolyser capable of producing liquid hydrogen and a superconductor, connected to the ship for the cold ironing, which must be kept very cold in order to pass huge amounts of current through a small section. The liquid hydrogen is used to make the superconducting cable work, keeping it at -250 °. In Liguria, among other things, we have a leading company that manufactures superconductors: Asg superconductors ».
This system, says Salerno, «in addition to emitting clean energy that does not generate Co2, it allows the reuse of hydrogen, once it has finished its path in the cable. And this blue hydrogen (so called because it is produced with the storage of Co2, ed) could be used to operate other facilities in the port. Trains entering the airport could also be powered this way. The Rina, in Val Camonica is working on a project to convert the railway transport system from diesel to hydrogen fuel ».