A languishing tugboat in New York has been given new life in a push for a greener future. The NH3 Kraken, a 67-year-old boat, set sail on a tributary of the Hudson River on Sunday night powered by ammonia.
The boat is a project of Amogy, a New York-based startup that develops a new, carbon-free fuel with cleanly made ammonia. The company retrofitted the old tug with its new technology that uses liquid ammonia produced by renewable electricity. The ammonia is split into its base components hydrogen and nitrogen, and then the hydrogen is sent into a fuel cell to generate electricity which powers the vessel. There are no carbon emissions from the process, though there are trace amounts of nitrogen oxides that Amogy is working to eliminate completely.
The boat can run for 10 to 12 hours on a 2,000 gallon tank. Amogy CEO Seonghoon Woo said the NH3 Kraken project is “not just demonstrating our technology, it’s really going to be telling the story to the world that we have to fix this [climate change] problem sooner than later.”
