Through a holistic approach, APOLO aims to tackle the challenges of power conversion from ammonia and develop an efficient and flexible ammonia cracking technology. This technology will be coupled with fuel cells and engines to achieve complete decarbonization of the maritime sector. As the main objective of the call is to demonstrate scalability beyond 3MW, the consortium will focus on showcasing the following demonstration units: i) A 125kW power conversion system that utilizes an ammonia cracker coupled with a PEM fuel cell system, achieving an overall system efficiency of 51% to 54%. The ammonia cracker will be customized to work with different pressure conditions and efficiency levels of PEM fuel cells. A comparison of efficiency levels will be conducted to evaluate the flexibility of the cracking system for all types of PEM fuel cells. ii) A 125kW partial ammonia cracker coupled with a 4-stroke engine, exhibiting an overall system efficiency above 45% APOLO is dedicated to minimizing the ecological footprint of transportation and energy, focusing on the maritime sector. To achieve this, we're actively developing innovative power conversion technologies such as cracker, fuel cell, and engine, and utilizing life cycle assessment (LCA) at various stages of product development. The technologies developed in APOLO are capable of targeting the first 30,000 ships in the market. Initially, the focus will be on vessels with 1 to 10 MW propulsion, with a significant number of them being around 3 MW in the next decade, as these are the first vessels relevant for ammonia-powered solutions.

SHIPLYS has been specified as necessary by our architect, shipbuilder and shipowner members, who, in order to survive in the world market, need to improve their capability to reduce the cycle time and costs of design and production, to be able to reliably produce better ship concepts through virtual prototyping and to meet the increasing requirements for LCCA (Life Cycle Cost Analysis), environmental assessments, risk assessments and end-of-life considerations as differentiators. Yet, the calculation and modeling to do this is difficult and time consuming, especially for SMEs without a large overhead of trained staff and tools, due to difficulties in integrating data between incompatible tools and formats for different design stages: conceptual hull design; the finite element calculations feeding preliminary and detailed designs; and virtual prototyping simulation models. This is coupled with the lack of an industry specific lifecycle modeling technique, hindered by the lack of information to support reliable decision-making. SHIPLYS aims to transfer experience from the development of industry modeling coherence schemes e.g. BIM (Building Information Modelling), and use them to produce new techniques for quick, reliable multi-disciplinary modeling capability for the marine industry: - Develop standardization aspects of the new paradigm by transferring the key BIM Product Model principles: identify and capture the useful implicit information in existing CAD/CAE data and develop data formats to provide persistence for data reuse between design stages - Develop a Virtual Prototyping system to incorporate LCCA, environmental and risk assessment criteria, for fast and cost effective evaluation of alternatives - Add multi-criterion decision analysis techniques to support decision making across the short/ long term, based on explicit formulation matrix of ‘Buyer Utility;’ the key purchasing decision criteria - To build on ISO10303 standards for interoperable data reuse

The proposal develops a combination of energy-saving solutions that can be adopted in retrofitting aimed at achieving the 35% of GHG emissions. Two new technologies, i.e. wind assisted ship propulsion and an innovative air lubrication system, will be developed together with other solutions that, although based on already mature technologies, such as operational and hydrodynamic design optimization and ship electrification, have to be expanded to be integrated with the new solutions as well as to cope with the constraints posed by the original ship design. The final objective of RETROFIT55 is to create an advanced web-based Decision Support System (DSS), that fuses together digital twins of the different systems into an integrated digital ship model. The DSS will feature a catalogue of retrofitting solutions that are up-to-date and ready to be deployed at the end of the project and easily extendable afterward while developed and demonstrated at TRL 7-8, suitable for different ship types and operational contexts. The DSS will enable the user to configure the retrofitting by combining different options which are suitable for the specific ship type and comparing them in terms of life-cycle cost, return-of-investment and several KPIs, such as EEXI, CII. Referring to the ZEWT strategy, while primarily contributing to the Design and Retrofit, the implementation of the project will also intersect other topics, such as Use of Sustainable Alternative fuels, Energy Efficiency, Electrification and Digital Green. The consortium brings together universities and research institutions, three developers of the new technologies, a ship design office, software developers, ICT experts, a classification society, a ship-repair company, and two large ship operators.

Many of the challenges faced by small and medium sized EU shipyards can be addressed by improving their productivity for fabricating new, high technology vessels and increasing their access to the specialist repair and maintenance market. Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a high integrity, low distortion, environmentally benign, welding technique, which was previously investigated in FP7 project HILDA (High Integrity Low Distortion Assembly) and recommended for shipbuilding due to its high quality and suitability for automation. A recent break-through in the tooling material available for FSW now shows potential to enable this process for welding of steel structures (traditionally it has only been possible to use FSW in aluminium) – this represents a huge opportunity to improve the productivity of European shipyards. In RESURGAM, will combine FSW with the new tool material to deliver: • The introduction of low cost friction stir welding (FSW) systems for steel that can be retrofitted to their existing CNC machines; • The introduction of AI enabled, robotic FSW systems capable of making underwater weld repairs. These fabrication and repair capabilities, backed by the secure, digital Industry 4.0 infrastructure and techniques already in widespread use in the automotive and aerospace industries, will facilitate the rapid, coordinated but distributed modular manufacture of ships and watercraft throughout Europe. Practically, this will allow ships damaged anywhere in the world will have the option of being repaired in place without the need to travel to the nearest dry dock. This will allow ship owners to choose the most suitable yards to conduct their repairs rather than the nearest, and the repairs may be undertaken by yards with no dry dock of their own thus significantly increasing the number of yards able to undertake such work. All of this will implemented by the European shipyards and Naval architects in Europe.