Yesterday we ran across an interesting concept, WindHunter. Effectively, this is a mobile platform with nine large wind turbines dedicated to the manufacture of hydrogen. See an image of the concept below:

The idea is to refit old single hull oil tankers (now illegal for oil transport) to support a large platform on which will be placed large (5MW) wind turbines. The power generated will be used to electrolyze water separating it into hydrogen and oxygen (the plan calls for selling the hydrogen, but oxygen is valuable too.)

While this is a large and unproven project, the potential is apparent. Since the platform is mobile, it can travel to wind rich enviroments and orient itself to optimally harvest the wind resource. It can use the water as raw material for hydrogen production as well as for cooling. The hydrogen gas sales are projected to be near $25M per year at just 25% capacity factor for the platform. Modern land-based turbines are seeing capacity factors closer to 35% and with the mobility factor, it may be possible to boost the capacity factor of the WindHunter turbines beyond that threshold.

There are certain to be technical obstacles to overcome (engineering, storm worthiness, hydrogen transport, etc) but it’s certainly a concept that should get more examination and perhaps will come into being.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 8:11 am and is filed under Storage, Wind.