Aiding maritime decarbonisation is the driving goal of Oasis Marine as we utilise our expertise in marine engineering to overcome challenges facing the industry.
The future fuel of choice for the maritime industry is a complex issue. Moving away from using diesel by default to a mix of greener solutions will potentially include ammonia, methional, electric, hydrogen and others including direct wind power! There is no single fuel solution for the future zero emission propulsion fleet. Oasis Marine, although pioneering offshore charging, are exploring other applications of our buoys to meet multiple future fuel needs. Vessels and their duty cycles need to adapt to be compatible in the energy transition. This includes adoption of offshore charging and re-fuelling technology.
Oasis Marine partnered with O.S. Energy and the University of Strathclyde to complete a project developing these future fuel compatible buoys funded by the Scottish governments Emerging Energies Technology Fund. In this project, Hydrogen generated offshore from excess wind energy was the chosen fuel and situation. The alternative to environmentally disruptive pipeline distribution is storing the hydrogen at source and exporting to vessels or barges/tankers via a buoy solution.
Oasis Marine has already successfully completed a CMDC1 project with partners CENEX and Logan Energy to develop a Hydrogen Offshore Transfer System (HOTS), aka the Oasis Hydrogen Buoy. This recent project, titled Tank Testing of the Hydrogen Offshore Transfer System (TestHOTS), developed the HOTS design further and targeted the mooring system of the buoy with modelling, analysis and wave tank testing at the Kelvin Hydrodynamic Laboratory at the University of Strathclyde. The vessel used in the model testing was an O.S. Energy design for a future green fuelled Offshore Service Vessel (OSV) including hydrogen propulsion. The project was successfully completed Autum 2024.
The buoy design in this project utilises the same mooring system as other buoy developments of Oasis Marine including the Oasis SOV Buoy which is a re-charging solution for electric and hybrid windfarm SOV maintenance vessels.
George Smith, Managing Director at Oasis Marine:
“The completion of the TestHOTS project is a great milestone for Oasis Marine. Carrying out scale model mooring analysis and wave tank testing validates our designs and the mooring system. This allows for further optimisations ahead of a full-size prototype build and demonstration which we have planned out as part of this project.”
