Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Hydrogen Mobility for Maritime Countries

Advanced Renewable

Tue , 14 May 2024 12:23 WIB

We have so many islands, more than 17,500 islands, only about 1/3 of them are inhabited, most of them are not yet inhabited and not even a few have yet to be named. On the other hand, few islands are inhabited by so many people in their big cities - that they barely have enough life-supporting capacity.

What hinders the spread of population and also means the spread of the prosperity? The main cause is transportation. Many of these islands are too far to reach by ship, and too expensive to reach by plane.

Procurement of facilities and infrastructure for transportation such as ports and airfields is also a dilemma like chickens and eggs situation. When ports and airports are built on an island before the island is fully occupied, many expensive ports and airports become non-functional. Meanwhile, an island cannot possibly be busy with economic activity if there are no ports and airports available.

Another problem faced by thousands of islands is the availability of fuel. It is not cheap and not easy to transport fuel to small and remote islands, so the potential of these islands is not exploited due to fuel constraints.

However, this dilemmatic situation like the chicken and the egg will soon be resolved for this maritime country and also other maritime countries such as the Philippines, Maldives, countries in the South Pacific, etc. This solution comes from a collaboration between a special ship that flies a few meters above sea level called the Wing In Ground Effect (WIGE), and biohydrogen which can be produced wherever this ship lands.

The WIGE is designed and produced by Sea Cheetah Corporation based in Miami, United States, while biohydrogen on demand, namely biohydrogen produced in-situ and in-time, where and when needed, is the result of R&D and production of the Advanced Renewable Organization ( ARO) based in Indonesia.

WIGE is a type of sea vehicle, regulated by world maritime authorities which are more lenient than aviation authorities, but its speed is close to that of an airplane. It is very fuel efficient because it doesn't need a lot of energy to be able to rise several kilometers above the sea surface like an airplane, just a few meters or half the plane's span - from the surface.

Because it flies so low, of course it shouldn't make noise like an airplane. Therefore, WIGE by Sea Cheetah is designed to use power from a hydrogen fuel cell engine, so this vehicle is very quiet, noise-free and emission-free.

With this solution, there will no longer be islands that are too far or too remote to live in and prosper, new tourist attractions will emerge from beautiful islands that are currently unexplored, and marine products will be abundant around these islands.