For a fleet that uses more than 16 million bbl of fuel each year, the price and supply/demand volatility of petroleum-derived energy resources weigh heavily on finances, security of supply and the resulting environmental footprint. And those very constraints are some of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Navy’s alternative fuels initiative that began about two years ago.
On October 14, 2009, at the Naval Energy Forum in McLean, Va., U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus set forth five energy targets that the Department of the Navy will meet over the subsequent ten years. Those targets are: make energy factors mandatory when awarding contracts for systems and buildings; sail the “Great Green Fleet” by demonstrating a alternative fuel-powered Green Strike Group in local operations by 2012 and then sailing it as the Great Green Fleet by 2016; reduce petroleum use in the Navy’s commercial fleet by 50% by 2015; produce 50% of shore-based energy requirements at Naval installations from alternative sources by 2020; and finally, reduce petroleum use so that by 2020, “half [the Navy’s] total energy consumption for ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles and shore installations will come from alternative sources,” Mabus said during his 2009 speech.
Beyond energy security
There’s more to it than just energy security though, said Rear Admiral Philip Cullom, director of the Navy’s Energy and Environmental Readiness Division, which coordinates the Navy’s alternative energy efforts.
The move is also about ensuring the mobility of the Navy’s forces, Cullom said, being as efficient as possible in the sense that efficiency grants additional combat capability by extending tactical range “by not using as much fuel, [which] is a terribly important thing in combat … as we found out in every major conflict since we’ve been using something other than wind or people power to do what we do,” he said. “We’ve found that energy resources can either become your albatross or it can be the tactical advantage that helps you win.”
Energy, he emphasized, needs to be viewed as a strategic resource and tactical advantage.
“Energy security comes in a lot of different flavors and energy security is, the way the secretary looks at it from a national perspective, the ability to not be beholden to fuel sources that may be challenged in terms of our availability to be able to use them,” Cullom said. “And also from an economic perspective, to be able to develop new fuel sources in the United States of America that exist here today that will allow us to not have to have a balance of payment continually going in one direction. And that’s precisely the national view that the country needs to look at it in.”
Reaching the goal
But the big question right now is how the Navy will get to those ambitious targets. Mabus himself said in 2009 that he had been told “40% is a more realistic goal [than 50% by 2020] and even that remains difficult because of the cost and logistics.”
From a financial point of view, getting away from petroleum is crucial. In 2007 alone, the Navy’s total fuel bill was about US$1.2 billion with crude oil at $33/bbl, Cullom said. The very next year, crude oil peaked at around $147/bbl, and if that price had not fallen back down, the Navy “could have paid $5.1 billion” for fuel in 2008, Cullom explained. “So in one year, our fuel bill would have gone up by $4 billion. So if your fuel bill goes up by $4 billion, you’re going to buy $4 billion of something less because you’re buying fuel.
Another way of putting it is that for every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil, more than $300 million is added to the U.S. Navy’s annual fuel costs, Mabus said during an interview with Reuters in late February.
So, the Navy’s research teams are working relentlessly to make those targets possible. Initial work really began around the 2008 time frame, when the Navy’s researchers and fuels teams started to look at what would need to be done if the Navy was to certify new fuels for aircraft and ships, Gregory Toms, fuels and lubricants technical warrant holder at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), told FUEL.
“So what we were looking at is the development of a protocol that basically is the roadmap and processes to qualify alternative fuels. So when we heard the secretary’s 2012 goal, we said … ‘wow, we’ve got a lot of work to do in a short amount of time,’” he said.
The secretary’s 2009 speech “basically set the challenges and the goals and the direction for us and how to move forward,” said Rick Kamin, the Navy’s Fuels Team lead for aircraft at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), whose primary role is the oversight coordination and execution of the Navy’s alternative fuels efforts.
According to Toms, the protocol was sent out in February for final approvals.
“What we envision is that as an alternative fuel is qualified, we’re going to just tweak the existing specification to allow this fuel to be procured by DLA [Defense Logistics Agency Energy]. The current specification will be revised where it says fuel shall be derived from conventional sources including crude oil and shale oil to say it can also come from these new alternative sources,” Toms explained. “The specification revision should be complete sometime next year. Our long-term goal is to revise the specification, but we must first complete the protocol and qualification of the alternative fuel.”
And in order to put a new fuel into use across the fleet, extensive qualification testing needs to be done, as specific requirements that these fuels must meet preclude the use of just any old biofuel.
“First and foremost [these fuels] have to be able to operate and perform without any changes to the weapons systems, so they have to be what we call drop-in replacements,” Kamin explained. “The aircraft or the ship can’t know the difference, or shouldn’t know the difference, whether it’s getting a fully petroleum-based jet or ship propulsion fuel or it’s receiving fuel that’s produced partly from a non-petroleum source.”
Hicks pointed out that with about 280 ships and 3,700 aircraft in operation today, and the fact that this fleet will be used for the foreseeable future, “it’s really critically important that we don’t absorb any infrastructure changes because we really can’t” because of major cost concerns that would arise with trying to convert all those vessels to use a different fuel.
“The second part of it is because we operate in a maritime environment, our distribution systems are very defined and limited,” Kamin said. “So we can’t have any specialty products. Really what we’re looking for is a fuel that gets out to the ship, and whether it’s used for ship propulsion or aircraft, it performs exactly the same way every time.”
From test to application
Kamin explained that the actual testing protocol for a new fuel, whether for aircraft or ships, is a four- to five-step process that begins at the Navy’s fuels laboratory in Patuxent River, Md.
“We look at the specification properties that we currently buy fuel to, and that’s the first step of the testing – does it meet the current specification properties? Then with success in that, we move to what we call the ‘fit for purpose’ properties … those things that we don’t typically measure in the specification but are critical for performance in an aircraft or ship,” Kamin said. “Then we move on to the component testing. We want to make sure that the materials, whether they’re metallic or non-metallic, are compatible, so we do material compatibility testing. We do component and rig testing to make sure that the performance of the hardware is the same with these fuels.”
The next step in the process is engine testing, which ensures that the full-scale propulsion systems work exactly the same with this new fuel, Kamin explained.
Finally, after all those steps have been successfully completed, “we get what we call an air or sea worthiness approval, and we put it in an aircraft or ship. The aircraft or ship trials is the proof of the concept – all the pieces work, you put them all together in a single aircraft or ship, and run it through its entire operating profile, and we look for acceptable operation,” Kamin said.
And that’s exactly where the Navy is right now – within the past year alone, several different operational tests have been conducted with biofuels blends:
The Navy’s next test will center on an Allison gas turbine generator, Cullom said, and the initial steps of that testing process began in mid-January.
“This is a marine gas turbine and with the ultimate certification of that for biofuels, that allows us to be able to power all of our surface combatants – frigates, destroyers and cruisers – with biofuel as well,” Cullom explained. “And these are all the building blocks towards sailing the Great Green Fleet, demonstrating it in 2012, and then ultimately being able to deploy it in 2016.”
Cullom noted that the ultimate goal is for the Navy to be using 100% biofuels, but for right now, “in order to be able to ensure that we can have both a drop-in replacement and the fuel flexibility, our first much more logical step is instead of trying to go immediately to 100% biofuel and the challenges associated with whether that will be adequate or proper, we will go to the 50/50 blend, that way you can mix the biofuel completely into your fuel supply and not have to worry about whether or not the tank has biofuel in it or petroleum in it or some mixture thereof,” he said.
Challenges seeking solutions
“Right now we’ve taken the first step in the process. The biofuels, the hydrotreated renewable oils that we’re looking at, at 100% have a couple of issues that preclude us from using them at this time,” Kamin said.
One of the main issues is that biofuels have no aromatic compounds, both Kamin and Toms pointed out, which are critical to fuels for two reasons: first, they increase the density of fuel, which is critical for shipboard stability, distribution of fuel within a ship, as well as performance and range; and second, aromatics help older non-metallic elastomers materials swell, which creates a sealing action that keeps joints very leak-tight.
“These are just two of the key parameters that we looked at. Again, they are not part of the current specification, but are picked up in the protocol fit for purpose testing,” Toms added.
“So the first step around this was to blend in a 50/50 ratio with petroleum, and the petroleum adds those necessary ingredients,” Kamin said.
Kamin said as part of the work that researchers are doing to get to 100% biofuels, they’re looking at developing aromatic materials that are missing in these biofuels synthetically and looking at their impacts.
The use of such additives that would provide missing critical properties to biofuels could well solve associated problems, Toms explained, “but those are things that are much further out and why we’re qualifying the 50/50 blend now – this gives us that first step that we believe we can get through and qualify these fuels, then the next step would be going on to 100% renewables.”
So why is the Navy going through all this trouble to go through such comprehensive testing and approval processes? In short, “the Navy has used petroleum products for probably 50-some years, so we have a vast history of using petroleum-type products, we know how they respond in shipboard fuel systems, diesel engines and gas turbines,” Toms explained. “We don’t have that with alternative fuels.”
But there is a reason behind the fact that the current spec only allows for fuels derived from petroleum sources such as tar sands and crude oil, he noted.
“The main reason being the Navy is very concerned about the first generation of biofuels, the FAME [fatty acid methyl ester] type products – those are not compatible with navy ship-type systems,” Toms said.
First-generation biofuels don’t operate well when water is introduced into them – and because most Navy ships have compensated fuel systems, which draw in water to replace fuel as it’s burned, so the ship’s fuel tanks are kept full in order to keep the ship balanced, first-gen biofuels just aren’t feasible. That’s why the Navy is pursuing next-generation biofuels derived from a variety of feedstocks, with focus on camelina for aircraft purposes and algae for ships at the moment.
Wider deployment matters
One of the other major issues is the amount of biofuel the Navy needs to reach the 2020 target of 50% alternatives.
“That is oftentimes cited as being one of the big challenges for the industry overall is whether or not they could actually produce the fuels,” Cullom said. “We’ve been pretty upfront about the amounts that we need: 8,000 bbl in 2012, and that’s a mixture of HRJ-5 [hydrotreated renewable J-5] and HRF-76 [hydrotreated renewable F-76], those are the biofuel equivalents of the marine fuel that we use for ships, F76, and the aviation fuel, JP5, that we use for jet aircraft on navy ships. In 2016, that number goes to 80,000 bbl of biofuel, and then in 2020, it goes to 8 million bbl of biofuel.”
As to when those commercial amounts of biofuels will really make it out for the fleet to use, it comes down to seeing what unfolds in the broader biofuels marketplace.
“A lot of people are working very hard to meet the 2020 goal of 50%, and that’s not just the Navy, that’s industry [and] other organizations,” Kamin said. “When that actually happens is as much a market investment decision as anything else. The Navy will be prepared to use these fuels, industry has given signals that they’re looking forward to making this happen, and I think only time will tell if we get there by 2020. But I know there’s a lot of optimism, there’s a lot of positive signs over the last year that it’s going to be a reality.”
“I think the time frame is sooner than later from what we’re seeing,” Hicks said. “We’re seeing that this isn’t something that’s going to mature 15 years out, this is something in the next few years to no more than 10 years, where this market hits maturity based upon the engagement we’ve had with industry.”
Really the primary focus right now, until that final protocol is approved and the current fuel specifications are altered to account for fuels of alternative derivation, is research and development, Hicks said.
“We’ve got to test the chemistry part of the fuel, we’ve got to test obviously how it works on engines in static conditions, we’ve got to test those engines in their actual operational envelope as well. So all that’s going on, but looking down the horizon and from our vantage point, really these alternative fuels will need to be competitively priced with petroleum. That’s the bottom line,” he said. “That said, we realize that as these markets mature and develop, you may pay some small premiums until you get to that more mature market, and that’s an area that we’re working with industry … and just having the conversation to understand where this market is going, how rapidly it’s maturing so we can have a better sense as to what our investments will be.
“We’re putting the investments in place now to complete our testing and certification program through 2012, working with industry and letting them know what our needs are in terms of a demand signal, and are confident that they’re going to be able to step up and be able to provide fuels in the quantities and the price point that we’re going to ultimately need to be able to meet our mission,” Hicks said.
The Navy is currently on track to meet its 50% by 2020 goal, Cullom said. Biofuels will continue to be used in demonstrations through next year, and “we’re about a year away from actually seeing ships leaving port, going on a mission where the fuel that they have in their tank, for at least part of the time, is going to be some of these biofuels,” he said.
Cullom added that full use of biofuels “will be demonstrated as well in 2012 in one fashion or another.”
That brings the Navy that much closer to its 2016 goal of sailing the Great Green Fleet, an entire carrier strike group consisting of frigates, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers and the aircraft they carry, powered solely with biofuels, as well as its 2020 target of 50% biofuels across the entire fleet.
Beyond fuels
In the end, fuels are just one facet of the Navy’s overall alternatives goals, as the targets for 2020 are inclusive of more than just liquid transportation fuels – 50% of shore power must come from alternatives by 2020 as well, for instance.
“Fuel is … only a part of what our energy vision is,” Cullom said. “Our vision is really a navy that values energy as a strategic resource, a navy that understands how energy security is fundamental to executing the mission that we have to go do… a navy that’s resilient to any potential energy future, and really if I had to say it succinctly, it’s that energy is vital to our mission. It’s as vital to our mission as the weapon systems that it fuels.
“So we have to value the barrel of fuel that isn’t burned or the net MBTU that isn’t consumed as much as finding an alternative barrel to petroleum. Otherwise you end up just trading one problem in for another,” he said. “If all we did was focus on an alternative to fuel, that wouldn’t be much of a strategy by itself.”
Louise Poirier can be reached at lpoirier@hartenergy.com or +1 (713) 260-6419.
Beyond just biofuels, the Navy is hard at work on a number of other alternatives, explained Rear Admiral Philip Cullom, director of the Navy’s Energy and Environmental Readiness Division.
“We have a number of other things that are in the works and this gets back to the other part of the energy vision and the energy strategy is that there are a lot of tests and developments on the efficiency side of the house on lighting, on new hull coatings, on new propeller coatings, and the first pilot program to put a hybrid electric drive onto a destroyer that are also reaching their completion,” Cullom said. “Additionally on the shore side, we’ll be doing a pilot test towards ocean thermal energy conversion, which will use the delta-T in the ocean to be able to power an ammonia engine, and that ammonia engine will then provide enough electricity to power a place like Diego Garcia or Guam or Hawaii, and oh, by the way – it can produce fresh water in addition to making electricity.”
One of the crucial elements to the Navy’s fuel certification procedures is “fit for purpose” testing. What that is, as Rick Kamin, the Navy’s Fuels Team lead for aircraft, explained, “is a step beyond the specification. It’s looking at some of those properties that have been inherent with petroleum that we don’t test for but we’ve built our weapons systems around,” Kamin said. “Things like dielectric constant from the aviation side. It’s a critical parameter that the tank gauging systems use on our aircraft, so we have to make sure that even though we don’t test for it in the specification when we buy the fuel that the same design limits in the fuel hold regardless of source.
“Auto ignition temperature, again, is something that petroleum has a well-defined limit to – it’s an issue for shipboard safety. It’s properties like that that we look at that we just want to make sure that the petroleum box that all of our weapons systems have been defined and designed to that use biofuels or alternative fuels perform exactly the same way.”
“There’s level one and level two fit for purpose testing, with level two being some of the more expensive, longer tests to perform. Material compatibility falls into level two,” explained Gregory Toms, fuels and lubricants technical warrant holder at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). “Material compatibility is required to ensure that all the different steels, coatings, elastomers, etc. are compatible with the fuel, so there’s an extensive part of the protocol that identifies those test requirements.”
Partnerships are bringing to the Navy’s portfolio a wide range of expertise to the pursuit of alternatives.
“We are working with everybody. We are working with our aircraft and ship equipment manufacturers, both engines and fuel systems,” said Rick Kamin, the Navy’s Fuels Team lead for aircraft. “On the aviation side we’re working with GE, Rolls Royce, Boeing, Honeywell, Hamilton Standard – anyone who makes components that go into our aircraft we are partnering with them because they bring a unique technical experience to us.”
The Navy is also partnering with colleagues in the Air Force, who have a robust certification program, sharing information in order to reduce both cost and time for approvals, he added.
“We’re also working with industry, both those people who make the fuel as well as those people who are also testing the fuel for commercial applications,” Kamin said. “And we’re working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. They play critical roles in bringing these fuels to market to commercialization. We’re providing the role of an early adopter, but they’re the people who are funding the technology development and the commercialization development of these technologies that are going to make the fuels that we hope to use in the future.”Biofuels bring not only energy security to the Navy’s fleet, but also improve upon the environmental impacts that result from burning more than 16 million barrels of petroleum-derived fuel each year.
Gregory Toms, fuels and lubricants technical warrant holder at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) noted that in the case of algal-derived fuel, for example, “when you’re growing the algae, it’s absorbing the CO2 [carbon dioxide] out of the atmosphere. The oil is extracted from the algae and refined into a fuel, which is used in shipboard engines and boilers releasing CO2 when the fuel is burned. The capturing of CO2 when growing renewable fuels is unique and helps reduce overall CO2 emissions when compared to petroleum fuels. From an environmental standpoint it has a very good effect that we can greatly reduce the net amount of CO2 that’s being released into the atmosphere.”
The other environmental benefit Toms pointed out is that these biofuels are being created from non-food feedstocks – camelina and algae.
“And the last thing I’ll say about that is these alternative fuels contain almost no sulfur, so you’re reducing sulfur emissions. That’s another positive impact that these alternative fuels will have in improving air quality,” he said.
