How aviation technology could revolutionize maritime transport for a greener future

With shipowners having until 2020 to comply with lower fuel emissions regulations, the intelligent rigid wingsail system invented by a Spanish start-up called bound4blue could be an answer that also saves them millions in fuel costs. The company’s chief executive, José Miguel Bermúdez, speaks to Mark Edwards.

When Jules Verne had his visionary engineer Pencroft say in his 1874 novel ‘The Mysterious Island’ that “water will be the coal of the future” it was the stuff of science fiction. But, like many other elements in the French writer’s works – flight, space travel and underwater voyages – it looks set to become reality.

A young, innovative team of aeronautical engineers from Spain, under the company name bound4blue, is bringing aviation technology to the shipping industry. Its patented system of intelligent rigid wingsails, similar to airplane wings, harnesses wind power to help propel the vessel, reducing the use and expense of hydrocarbon fuels and their harmful emissions. The ultimate goal – one the company is currently working on – is to design a vessel powered solely by the wingsail technology, producing hydrogen and oxygen in turbines under the deck by means of the electrolysis of seawater in a Verne-pleasing clean and cost-efficient way.

A GREENER FUTURE

It was in 2015 that bound4blue chief executive José Miguel Bermúdez founded the company along with fellow aeronautical engineers David Ferrer and Cristina Aleixendri Muñoz. The trio met at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and started to work on the project in their spare time.

“The company was set up as we could not envision a future in which the dependence on fossil fuels and the emission of pollutant emissions was an issue,” says 32-year-old Mr Bermúdez. “To us, that was not a ‘real future’.”

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