The Department of Energy plays a leading role in the European GAMMA project for sustainable maritime transport
GAMMA project kicks off: for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly maritime sector
The Department of Energy of the Politecnico di Milano is actively involved in the European research project GAMMA (Green Ammonia and BioMethanol fuel MAritime vessels), funded with 13 million euro from the European Commission’s Horizon Europe innovation framework programme out of a total of 17 million.
The GAMMA project, which started in January 2024 and will last five years, aims to make international maritime transport more sustainable, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) goals of reducing emissions from the sector to net-zero by 2050.
The Politecnico di Milano will be heavily involved in the techno-environmental analysis of the proposed solutions that will lead to determining their carbon footprint using a Well-to-Wake approach. The POLIMI team will focus on simulating the production and use of environmentally friendly fuels (bio-methanol and green ammonia), determining energy and mass balances for a techno-economic-environmental assessment. In addition, the option of CO2 capture directly on ships will be evaluated, with the aim of achieving negative emissions when bio-methanol is used as a raw material. Prof. Davide Bonalumi, from the Department of Energy, comments: ‘Our role within the GAMMA project is crucial for assessing the environmental impact of the proposed new technologies. With our contribution, we want to provide reliable data and fundamental information to guide the sector towards a more sustainable energy transition.’
The project involves the demonstration of innovative technologies installed on board a 60,000-tonne cargo ship of the ANT Topic fleet. A combination of technologies will exploit climate-neutral fuels, enabling the conversion of ammonia and methanol into hydrogen, which will then be used to generate electricity via fuel cells integrated in a hybrid system with advanced photovoltaic systems.
16 partners from all over Europe are involved in GAMMA:
Verkís (Iceland), ANT Topic (Italy), Fraunhofer (Germany), Aurelia (Netherlands), Ballard (Denmark), Sea Green Engineering (Italy), Energy Cluster Denmark (Denmark), SINTEF (Norway), Solbian (Italy), Amethyste (France), Elkon Elektrik (Turkey), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), ARM Engineering (France), RINA (Germany), Amnis Pura (Portugal) and Dotcom (Italy).
