First North Sea crossing on hydrogen powered boat

Student team pushes range and seaworthiness of offshore foiling

Demonstrating the long range capabilities of hydrogen as a propulsion fuel, Team Hydro Motion from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands has crossed the North Sea from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to Ramsgate in the UK. The team hopes to contribute to the adaptation of the future fuel in the boating industry.

One of the big advantages of using hydrogen as a propulsion fuel, lies in the fact that it has a very high energy density. This consideration was the starting point for 23 students who joined in the Delft University of Technology Hydro Motion Team to demonstrate the range possibilities of hydrogen.

As the Netherlands, home country to their university, is along the North Sea shores, the team chose the challenge of crossing the North Sea from the Netherlands to England in their small, hydrogen powered foiling boat. These waters are quite choppy and very busy with freight ships going to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Aberdeen, and many other destinations.

Crossing these waters can indeed be quite a challenge. Controlling the ride on the foils and preventing crashes into the steep and unpredictable waves was the major technical development these students needed to achieve.

Hydro Motion Team rides the waves with hydrogen-powered foiling boat

Team Hydro Motion is an ongoing project that attracts a different group of students from the acclaimed university every year. Historically, it has its roots in the TU Delft solar vehicle project and the solar boat projects. The use of hydrofoils was first introduced in the solar boat project, while using hydrogen as a fuel was introduced in 2020.

The Solar Boat Team won championships competing against other teams from universities around the world to demonstrate the feasibility of solar power as an energy source for propulsion. After choosing to demonstrate hydrogen as a propulsion fuel in their experimental boats, the Delft students participated in the Monaco Energy Challenge and won this global competition in 2023 by being the fastest and most manoeuvrable on the water among the alternatively powered boats of other universities and research institutes.

In this fourth year of refining the hydrogen-powered boat, the challenge lay not in competing against other student teams in coastal and harbour waters, but in demonstrating seaworthiness.

Anticipating and navigating North Sea waves

“To successfully cross the steep and sometimes high waves of the North Sea on hydrofoils, we needed to develop an intelligent system that predicts the motion of the next wave coming in,” explains Jeroen von Berg, the media spokesman for the student team.

“We made longer struts so the boat can fly higher above the waves. We designed for a typical sea state with wave heights averaging 80 centimetres. This means the higher waves might reach two metres occasionally.

The new struts are two metres in length. More importantly is stabilisation. The boat should not be tilted with the waves. When rocking over each wave, the boat will destabilise and lose the lifting force from the foils. When a wave comes in, the foils should ideally not rise with it, but go horizontal through the wave that can then roll under the steadily moving boat above the struts.

We developed active actuation based on a computer algorithm. All of the motion of the waves is measured as precisely as possible. We use a gyroscope to measure the motions of the boat. An Ultrasonic Level Sensor (Senix) looks forward to see and measure incoming waves.

The software we wrote should determine in real-time at which angle of attack the underwater wing that lifts the boat should enter the wave and exit it to assure a smooth ride. We want to make the next step towards a foiling craft anticipating the waves and adjusting to the sea state for comfortable and damage-free navigation. To do this, we were able to work with a lot of sponsoring partners and with the start-up Flying Fish, founded by members of former TU Delft hydrofoil boat teams.”

Hydrogen-powered noat design and pressure management

The 2024 Team Hydro Motion boat is 8.5 metres long and 2.65 metres wide. It has a deep-V hull form to enable easy acceleration of the boat with the hull still in the water up to the speed where the foils start lifting the boat. The deep-V also dampens waves that would rise as high as they slam into the hull.

The boat is powered by electricity, which is produced in a fuel cell from hydrogen. 25.2 kg of hydrogen is stored in three cylindrical tanks at 350 bar pressure. The propeller on the aft foil strut can speed the boat up to 40 km/h (21.5 knots).

Real-life challenges and achievements

Part of the team has been studying the sea state and tidal streams to try and find the ideal weather window for a crossing. On July 11th, the very first North Sea crossing of a purely hydrogen-powered boat was achieved.

The pilot was Jan Gogolewski, a student of aerospace engineering who was involved in the design of the hydrofoils. His co-pilot was Renzo Ligthart, a student of mechanical engineering who had been working on the software for active actuation of the foils. Ten students of the team followed the duo in a chase boat over the sea.

Soon after leaving the harbour of Breskens in the Scheldt river estuary, rough waves prevented the boat from starting foiling. It could not reach the speed to get on its wings in such seas. Rocking motions caused damage, forcing the team to go into the harbour of Zeebrugge for repairs. These could be performed very quickly, so the Hydro Motion boat could continue its journey after only a brief stop.

From there, the crossing to Ramsgate was 109.7 km, for which the boat used 13.2 kg of hydrogen.

Prototype development and future prospects

“So can our inventions be incorporated by boat builders? Oh, I’d love to say yes to that,” Jeroen smiles. The student of biotechnology was involved in the development of both the hydrogen propulsion system and the hydrofoils. “But I have mostly focused on the publicity side of the project.

Getting our message across is just as important as the inventions we develop. What we have created now is a prototype, an opening to the improvement of existing systems that could be refined for production. It would be great to work on developing it further and to draw attention from the marine community.”