Tugboats are the indispensable little champions that haul in the big, beefy ships oceanward from their docking points. General Electric has decided that these oil burners need to get a little cleaner and greener. So we have the boffins at General Electric and C-MAR working feverishly to develop a diesel-electric hybrid engine for the tugboats. This technology, though not radical uses a slightly different approach to make the tugboats sip 35% less fuel and reduce emissions up to 80 percent. Talking about the slightly different approach, this diesel-electric will use the electric motor as a means of primary propulsion and to generate electricity for the electric motor, the tugboat will use a diesel generator. This will certainly improve the air quality across harbors as there are an estimated four thousand tugboats doing tugging duty in the United States alone. If this works out for the tugboats, I cannot see any reason why it cannot be used to power the bigger ships.
Blog Wired :Via: EcoFriend
