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The future of maritime propulsion


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7 hours ago, farmerben said:

On the Mississippi river the towboats do not stop to refuel.  Tender boats come out and refuel them with diesel in motion.  I wonder to what degree you could do the same thing on batteries?  The big towboats use about 10,000 kW of power.

Now this is quite an surprise as you are in an river with plenty of places to stop. But if your towing a lot of badges it get a bit harder. It just has to be an large enough business you know your likely to get an tender. 
I know that trawler often get refueled at sea. 
Also learned that capital ships refuel their escorting destroyers, even the nuclear powered carriers carry fuel for escorts. Iowa class battleships was designed to run on the think bunker oil but then reactivated the destroyers ran on diesel, so they was modified to run on diesel to, steam turbine so not much modification needed and much better to share fuel. 
And the square cube law is in favor of this. Add that on an large ship fuel can be used as armor. 

For electrifying it, why not have an battery badge, smaller one attached to left or right. in front of the other badges, tie down to them and the tug, then bring over the power cable and bring it online. crew take other badge back for recharging. power badge has quite good motors but optimized for it intercepting tugs and I expect raised out of water during tow but it could be uses as an secondary control if tug is down. 
Freight trains in the US tend to swap crews every 3-5 hours with train from other direction, benefit is that crew get home after a shift, not like long haul fight or ships. 
Now it would be easier to swap locomotives than tugs. 

Edited by magnemoe
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