“Water will be turned into power,” said Professor Xinyan Wang, Brunel University of London. “We take seawater, split it using renewable electricity to make hydrogen gas, store it onboard as a molecular solid, then burn it in an engine instead of diesel, with no CO2.”
Backed by £1.44 million from the Department for Transport’s UK SHORE initiative and Innovate UK, the project is part of a £30 million push to decarbonize British shipping and sea travel. The goal is to take diesel out of ferries, trawlers and workboats where batteries are impractical.
The result is a new hydrogen engine system built on two clever innovations. There are electrodes that can split hydrogen straight out of seawater, cutting out the need for costly desalination. And a thinner-than-paper ‘nano film’ that locks the hydrogen away safely in an unpressurized solid form at room temperature, without freezing it at minus 250 °C in heavy giant pressurized tanks.
Together these breakthroughs promise a safe, compact, ready-to-use seaworthy fuel supply that can potentially fuel fishing fleets, coastal ferries, tug boats and other harbour service vessels.
For the first time, these lab-scale inventions will be built up in Britain, in partnership with Genuine H2 and the Center for Process Innovation (CPI), which will show they can be manufactured at scale using UK supply chains.
Codenamed GH2DEM, the project will be the first test of Brunel’s heavy-duty hydrogen combustion engine, soon to be installed on campus. It will be powered entirely by Genuine H2’s electrolyser and storage system, creating a full hydrogen chain—from seawater, to storage, to propulsion.
“Brunel has been active in research and development of next generation hydrogen combustion engines,” said Professor Wang at Brunel’s Centre for Advanced Powertrain and Fuels. “By working with leading research partners in the hydrogen production and storage, this project moves further to demonstrate a complete solution for marine propulsion from renewable energy via seawater to engine propulsion for marine vessels.”
The whole process is circular. As well as clean fuel, it produces pure water that can be reused or safely poured back into the sea.
Testing has just begun on land, with the demonstrator running until March 2026.