“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein.
The TRYBRID Project will deliver a technology demonstrator for the new energy agenda, on a platform that has never before been seen : a fuel cell circumnavigation of the planet, using energy in new ways through onboard processing. Photovoltaic solar energy, will hybridize with a fuel cell, and a gas fired diesel electric, in a three way
combination, atop the triple hulled, TRYBRID. To do this natural gas is steam reformed on demand, to supply a hydrogen reformate gas, to power a PEM fuel cell. As well, the 70% hydrogen brew, is added to internal combustion, to clean up the exhaust from the gas fired diesel electric system, (used for 20 knot sprint speeds). This revolutionary trimaran, will be taken on a 3 year circumnavigation of the world’s capital cities, in a partnership in negotiation between China and Australia. The project is both a climate change ambassador, and a lighthouse for the clean use of gas based fuels. Given the inevitable ramping of oil prices, overlaid with climate change concerns, the TRYBRID project is, indeed, ‘An idea whose time has arrived’.
Australia’s world dominance as designer of the most efficient fast ferries, combined with leading edge EU hydrogen technology, is being deployed by the Australians and Chinese, to confront and abate concerns around CO2, peak oil, and diesel emission toxicity.
Commercial spin-offs, in the marine and transport sector are substantive. A range of marine uses in recreational, ferry and military use can be based on the fast, efficient TRYBRID platform, where speed over long distance does not come with a heavy fuel bill, nor a sea movement inducing sea sickness. The lack of hot exhaust give the vessel a low infrared signature, which when combined to the boats ability to refuel on unrefined gas at sea, or to run on a choice of fuels, has clear implication for patrol boat deployment. The development of the engineering design and accreditation standards needed to promote gas as a marine fuel, is an important part of TRYBRID’s purpose.
More significant in the project’s commercial application, is the shift towards natural gas as a stepping stone into hydrogen as a transport fuel. TRYBRID obviates the need for a specialist hydrogen refueling stations, and by laying bare the comparative efficiencies of both gas fired diesel combustion, and the fuel cell, at last, a hydrogen project is being honest about the energy needed to make hydrogen. The uptake implications for transport, especially marine transport, are important.
This website details the boats design purpose and features. We look at the designers, builders, academics, government and industrialists who are engaged on the project, along with the aid teams with whom the boat will be working, after its world technology demonstration tour. This site is a blog that has tracked the progress of the project. Feel free to add a comment.
The significance of the goodwill partnership proposed between China and Australia, through TRYBRID, sends a profound and responsible message from two countries, who together, are producing and using large amounts of gas based energy. The message is clear. Innovation in partnership, can change the destiny and direction of the transport sector, currently on a global highway, where the current traffic flow leads to an environmental and economic cliff face. Read the rest of this entry »
At the same time, filming for a documentary, tracking the progress of the TRYBRID project, commenced, with 5 hours of footage shot , collating the most up to date expression of expert opinion, from the world’s leaders in hydrogen, selected from 600 delegates from over 40 countries, All were gathered to discuss the hydrogen agenda in the context of the sudden 2008 world oil price spike, and against the backdrop of the international shift in acceptance around the climate change agenda of 2007.
TRYBRID’s new found energy appetite, with the shift away from limited battery storage, to the more energy intense hydrogen storage, has created a re-think of the project’s capacity to make electricity from photovoltaic solar arrays. We have now added in awnings and trampolines covered in added photovoltaic cells. With say lithium batteries alone, we could both quickly fill, and more disappointingly, very quickly empty the batteries. The production of hydrogen through photovoltaic, electrically powered electrolysis, means we can store days of seagoing power, instead of just hours worth, in batteries. But it also means TRYBRID has an insatiable desire for its own, onboard source energy, in TRYBRID’s case, from photovoltaic power from the sun.
The TRYBRIB project shares many of the aims of the educational programs embodied in the Solar Boat Challenge and its sister program, the Hydrogen Car Challenge. Both these Australian schools programs aim to bring awareness, in a DYI experiential way, that is introducing the solar and hydrogen agendas to thousands of school kids. 
The programs give basic build components to the many and growing interested schools, with annual competitions organised to excite some competitive fun, as the new energies are deployed in small cars, and boats… both model and pilot-able. 
The process of designing a boat that is not much like anything that proceeds it, takes degree of imagination that the new software in 3D development makes much more accessible an engaging.
It had to happen sooner or later. Batteries just won’t cut it. When you have a perpetual incoming stream of photovoltaic power, with nowhere to go after you have filled the batteries, some serious naval gazing was inevitable. We already have an electric powered boat, ready for a hydrogen fuel cell to feed . We already have a huge photovoltaic supply of free electricity. The batteries, even several tonnes of the very best Lithium batteries, can be filled and emptied at an alarmingly impractical rate. You can’t just keep adding tonnes more lithium batteries; it will eventually weigh the boat down, this is a boat, not a submarine. But unlike just about any other means of transport, including trains and planes, buses and cars….. boats are unique. Boats are not restricted in width by rail gauges or road rules. Boats can easily support huge photovoltaic arrays…especially if you design the boat from the water up, to be a giant solar array. This is TRYBRID. 
itself is at the cutting edge, in this case, of international naval architectural design.
