Fuel cell and hydrogen in maritime application: A review on aspects of technology, cost and regulations

Currently, fuel cell and hydrogen technology are attracting more and more attention as a kind of green and clean energy technology in the context of the increasingly stringent carbon emission requirements of the shipping industry. However, there are still many obstacles to their maritime application due to high costs and a lack of infrastructure. This paper conducts a literature survey of fuel cell maritime applications from four aspects: key technologies of fuel cell and hydrogen maritime applications, cost and standards. It can be concluded that ships powered by hydrogen fuel cells will have a broad application prospect with the maturity of the hydrogen industry chain and the improvement of standards and regulations. Two main contributions of this paper are to fully understand a whole-process perspective of hydrogen and fuel cell maritime application, and to provide the problems and future direction in this field, which can help relevant research institutions and scholars evaluate the development status of the industrial chain and find new valuable research topics.