In just a few years, Sunreef Yachts, the world leader in the market for semi-custom luxury catamarans, has established itself as the reference player in eco-responsible yachting, both for its sailing catamarans and its motor catamarans, in through its ECO, electric or hybrid ranges.

Over the nautical seasons, these have taken over from the yard's traditional units. An enviable situation, rare in boating and yachting, but which however did not encourage the Sunreef Yachts teams to rest on their laurels. Because with ZERO CAT, Sunreef is going even further, by announcing a zero-emission luxury catamaran!

A few years ago, imagining a luxury catamaran sailboat, 90 feet long, self-sufficient in energy and with unlimited autonomy, would have been a challenge.

This challenge is clearly no longer one on the side of Gdansk, headquarters of the Polish shipyard Sunreef Yachts, which after having imagined electric and hybrid ECO catamarans, is now developing a ZERO EMISSION model called Zero Cat.

At the heart of this concept, an engine using a hydrogen fuel cell, generating electricity from green methanol, the system benefiting from the green energy produced on board by the yacht's solar energy system, with cells solar panels integrated into the entire structure of the yacht.

The fuel cell system produces clean energy without any emissions, an energy used both for electric propulsion and household electronics (on-board consumers).

This innovation is all the more interesting in that it incorporates all the specificities developed over the years by Sunreef in the field of eco-responsible yachting, namely:

• the integration of photovoltaic panels with XXL capacity integrated into the sides, roof cap and mast
• the installation of a powerful and safe battery bank, partly developed in-house
• the implementation of consumers (air conditioning, desalination, etc.) offering consumption levels never before achieved on this type of unit
• the choice of optimized electric motors
• the installation of really efficient hydrogenerators

With Zero CAT, Sunreef Yachts' goal was to develop a sustainable sailing superyacht, whose non-sail propulsion was to ensure self-sufficiency and unlimited range. By combining hydrogen energy and electric propulsion, the Zero Cat should once again give the Polish shipyard a good head start.

The advantage of green methanol

Unlike hydrogen produced on land and loaded on board a ship (or a truck), green methanol does not require any modification of the ship's tanks, nor complex and particularly expensive logistics (compression, cooling....) even delicate.

This is the advantage of e-fuels, these "green" fuels, made from photovoltaic energy, of which Siemens Energy is a pioneer. The production process of e-methanol is based on the chemical combination of CO2 and hydrogen. Hydrogen is first produced in an electrolyser, before being converted into methanol in a reactor by catalysis with carbon dioxide (CO2) from recovered and stored CO2. To manufacture e-methanol (carbon neutral), hydrogen from renewable electricity (photovoltaic or wind power) is used in combination with biogenic CO2. E-methanol can reduce CO2 emissions by 95%, nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions by 80%, and completely eliminate sulfur oxide (SOx) and particulate emissions.