The engineering group Kensche, Ruth & Partners is a company founded in 2019 that is primarily devoted to the development of new technologies to avoid pollutant emissions that can be used to slow down climate change.
Dipl.-Phys. Jürgen Ruth studied metal physics at the University of Göttingen. As an exhaust gas specialist at a large technology company in Stuttgart, Jürgen works as a physicist in Research and Advance Engineering and has been operating an engineering consultancy business as a sideline since 2004. As a native of Cuxhaven in Northern Germany, he came into contact with pollutant emissions that existed in shipping and were becoming more and more of a problem through his longstanding contacts and friendships with seafaring and shipping companies he had known since his youth. The patent DE 10 2018 1114 132.7, “process for the production of fuel” arose from these connections and discussions. It outlines the idea of how CO₂ can be extracted from the ship’s exhaust gases so that it can be processed into synthetic fuel at the destination using hydrogen generated from wind energy.
This is an ambitious goal. Since the principle of capturing and preventing CO₂ is not limited to maritime use, but rather covers the entire industrial sector, there is a long chain of individual tasks to be solved which we want to dedicate all our efforts to.
Dipl.-Ing. Christoph Kensche studied aerospace technology in Stuttgart. He draws his experience from many years of practical and scientific work in the composite sector. From 1977-2005 he worked at the Institute for Construction and Design Research (DLR) in Stuttgart, from 2005-2007 at Fraunhofer CWMT (later IWES) and from 2008-2015 at Hexion in Esslingen, which manufactures resin systems and adhesives for light aircraft and rotor blades for wind turbines. His work focused on the operational stability and lifetime prediction of light aircraft and rotor blades. Christoph taught for 20 years as a guest lecturer at the University of Stuttgart on the “Fatigue of Fiber Composite Materials” and for many years led the seminar “Rotor Blades for Wind Turbines” at the Haus der Technik in Essen. In addition to his full-time job, he has been an expert and a consultant for more than 30 years.
Jürgen and Christoph got to know each other in 2018 while pursuing their hobby of gliding. Christoph was fascinated by Jürgen’s idea of carbon capturing in ships. We see the work on the process described above and the possible reduction in pollutants as a challenge we would like to devote our efforts to while contributing all our experience gained over the years.
Implementing the process described above should be divided into several steps or pilot projects.
1. Pilot project in which important carbon capturing (CC) processes including pre- and post-treatment and storage of the CO₂ are set up and tested on a dual fuel marine diesel engine.
2. Pilot project in which a larger inland car ferry is equipped with H₂ storage and converted to a fuel cell engine. The necessary regenerative H₂ production and storage should take place on site.
3. Pilot project in which synthetic fuel is produced. The focus here is on upgrading and providing this technology to the offshore sector in the form of mobile modules. Synthesis of the fuel and the type of fuel to be produced are based on the boundary conditions of the maritime environment.
4. Proposal / planning of a German Center for Advanced Maritime Technology (DZMH) to combine all the knowledge on climate neutrality. In our view, establishing a sustainable knowledge hub, especially in times of great change, will be of major importance.
