This barge that carries beer does not pollute, but how does it do it?

This barge that carries beer does not pollute

Propelled only by electric motors powered by removable batteries, the Alphenaar barge made its inaugural trip between the city of Alphen-sur-le-Rhin and the port of Morerdijk, to the Netherlands in early September by transporting beer for beer forHeineken.This is a first in Europe.

Dutch brewer Heineken exports more than 70 each year.000 containers from the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.Also eager to "green" his business and his image, he intends to favor river navigation rather than road transport to bring his beer barrels to the quays.A solution favored by the dense network of Dutch channels and which makes it possible to delete annually some 100.000 deliveries by truck while reducing operating costs.To go even further towards the "zero emission" objective, the company now rents the services of the first "all -electric" barge designed by the Dutch company Zero Emission Services (ZES).

Removable exchangeable batteries

Called Alphenaar, named after the city of Alphen-sur-le-Rhin, its home port, this barge operated by the CCT transport company has two removable and exchangeable containers, stuffed with Lithium-ion modules.Called Zespacks, each of them contains 2.000 kWh of electricity, which allows the boat to navigate between 2 and 4 hours.With two zespack, the autonomy of a barge is then 60 to 120 kilometers.Arriving at your destination, the barge can land its discharged zespack and replace them with full batteries, all in less than 15 minutes.

To implement this approach, a consortium made up of the port of Rotterdam, the maritime company Wärtsilä, the energy company Engie and the ING bank have created the startup Zero Emission Services (ZES), which has been working on the concept since 2020.Support also comes from the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.Zes aims to be reassuring on the "sustainable" aspect of its solution: the battery containers are recharged, in port infrastructure, via 100 % renewable energy.

This model lends itself particularly well to the channels with high traffic which connect factories and ports located nearby.The system proposed by Zes has the big advantage of not imposing long recharge times of the batteries, which gives rise to quick rotations.On the other hand, this solution requires the development of infrastructure on the ground, which limits the possibilities of "all electric" transport to the sailors served by ZES.

It's only a beginning …

The startup feeds great ambitions for this battery barge model.The barge deployed with CCT and Heineken is only the beginning.The manufacturer quickly hopes to attract other customers and build a real corridor dedicated to its interchangeable container system.In the short term, he plans to operate a fleet of 8 container ships and 14 zespacks which will be recharged in one of the 8 associated stations.By 2030, she hoped to serve around thirty roads with 150 barges of the Alphenaar type.What to avoid 360 emissions.000 tonnes de CO₂ et de 2.800 tonnes of nitrogen oxides.

Note also that the battery containers are designed so that they can also be used occasionally on the ground, for example to stabilize the electricity network or respond to a temporary local electricity demand.