Sustainable future for the world’s largest inland port

For more than 100 years, the Port of Duisburg has served as a cornerstone of Europe’s coal industry, handling over 20 million tonnes of coal each year. Today, it is not only the world’s largest inland container port, but one that has embraced innovation to power itself using low-carbon alternatives. Its mtu hydrogen cogeneration plants and a fully integrated microgrid designed, developed and delivered in partnership with Rolls-Royce, are at the heart of this transition.

The innovative energy system used to power the new container terminal was designed not only for the Port of Duisburg, but also as a blueprint for other ports and infrastructure projects. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, the project named enerPort II aims to demonstrate that a project of this size can be operated more sustainably with local generation of heat and electricity.

Most of the power supplied to the container port comes from solar panels, with surplus energy stored in an mtu EnergyPack battery container. When the sun is not shining, its mtu fuel cell systems and hydrogen cogeneration plants leap into action with control systems always ensuring the optimum combination of power sources.

Alexander Garbar, head of corporate development at Duisburger Hafen AG, explained: The future is being tested here. Our microgrid runs reliably and shows that it is possible to supply such a large port terminal completely self-sufficiently with ‘green’ energy — that makes me proud.”

Completely CO₂-neutral
The combined heat and power units and fuel cells are already powered by hydrogen. In the future, an electrolyser will be used to produce ‘green hydrogen’ making the microgrid operation CO₂-neutral. The design of both mtu hydrogen engines now running in Duisburg is based on the proven stationary mtu gas engines, modified to accommodate the different physical and chemical properties of hydrogen. Each one has an output of 1MWh. But with further development currently underway to make it even more powerful, its engineers hope to deliver an engine with at least 2MWh of power in the future.

Rolls-Royce is committed to ensuring its products are fully compatible with sustainable fuels. With demand for hydrogen engines increasing, Andrea Prospero, a hydrogen engine developer at Rolls-Royce and his colleagues are developing a conversion kit for existing mtu gas engines.

Mr Prospero explained: “With this conversion kit, customers can turn their gas engine into a hydrogen engine, for example as part of a major overhaul, and thus generate CO₂-neutral energy.”

As part of a consortium with five companies and research institutes, Rolls-Royce engineers are developing the necessary technologies for new, more efficient hydrogen combustion engines. The publicly funded Phoenix (Performance Hydrogen Engine for Industrial and X) project aims to deliver a hydrogen engine with the same electrical and thermal energy as currently available natural gas CHP units in the larger output range for the first time.

Tobias Ostermaier, who heads the decentralised energy systems business at Rolls-Royce, said: “We are convinced that hydrogen combustion engines will become a central pillar of the energy transition. As soon as the availability of green hydrogen is ensured on a large scale, the technology of highly efficient hydrogen block-type thermal power stations promoted in the Phoenix project will be ready for use.”