(please note this post is a shameless plug piece for my job application at OpenWater Power)
Military submarines are the silent hunters of modern warfare, for nations like the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, these vessels are frequently nuclear powered, allowing for vessels to go years without needing to surface (if the vessels did not have pesky humans requiring fresh food). Other countries have less sci-fi sounding diesel electric submarines, where the vessels will surface as needed to bring in air to allow the diesel generators to recharge the vessels on board batteries. Newer vessels are even looking towards hydrogen fuel cells, I would like to suggest an alternative, a vessel that possesses "hot swappable" power packs composed of Aluminum water fuel cells.
Aluminum water fuel cells have an incredible ability to store energy, over 2.00* kWh/liter, all without requiring air to be added to the system for power production. Navies of the future could design vehicles that exclusively use these swappable fuel cell systems to power the vehicles energy needs. By eliminating the requirement of a mechanical generator and the associated acoustic dampening vessels could be made smaller, contributing to the difficulty of being detected. Depending on the design strategy of the organization creating these new fuel cell based submarines, the swappable elements could also include replacement air supplies, food stuffs and other materials for long term operations.
For navies working to extend their reach more covertly the swappable fuel cells could be hidden inside of shipping containers and said containers could "accidentally" be lost at sea for ships to pick up reserve power, the logistics would be complicated but not beyond the abilities of a mid-sized blue water navy.
Ok back to class work, the StartUp Institute is kicking my butt and I need to keep up with the torrent of projects and homework. I will try to make some sketches during my lunch break, although it wouldn't be that crazy for the swappable fuel cells to go into bays similar to the ICBM launch tubes found on Ohio class submarines.
*A previous version of this post listed the energy density as 200 kWh/liter, not the official 2.00 kWh/liter, I apologize for the confusion, I did not read the specification as closely as I should have.
Military submarines are the silent hunters of modern warfare, for nations like the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, these vessels are frequently nuclear powered, allowing for vessels to go years without needing to surface (if the vessels did not have pesky humans requiring fresh food). Other countries have less sci-fi sounding diesel electric submarines, where the vessels will surface as needed to bring in air to allow the diesel generators to recharge the vessels on board batteries. Newer vessels are even looking towards hydrogen fuel cells, I would like to suggest an alternative, a vessel that possesses "hot swappable" power packs composed of Aluminum water fuel cells.
Aluminum water fuel cells have an incredible ability to store energy, over 2.00* kWh/liter, all without requiring air to be added to the system for power production. Navies of the future could design vehicles that exclusively use these swappable fuel cell systems to power the vehicles energy needs. By eliminating the requirement of a mechanical generator and the associated acoustic dampening vessels could be made smaller, contributing to the difficulty of being detected. Depending on the design strategy of the organization creating these new fuel cell based submarines, the swappable elements could also include replacement air supplies, food stuffs and other materials for long term operations.
For navies working to extend their reach more covertly the swappable fuel cells could be hidden inside of shipping containers and said containers could "accidentally" be lost at sea for ships to pick up reserve power, the logistics would be complicated but not beyond the abilities of a mid-sized blue water navy.
Ok back to class work, the StartUp Institute is kicking my butt and I need to keep up with the torrent of projects and homework. I will try to make some sketches during my lunch break, although it wouldn't be that crazy for the swappable fuel cells to go into bays similar to the ICBM launch tubes found on Ohio class submarines.
*A previous version of this post listed the energy density as 200 kWh/liter, not the official 2.00 kWh/liter, I apologize for the confusion, I did not read the specification as closely as I should have.
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