Michelin Puts Puffy Sails on Cargo Ships
The white sailboat outside of Michelin Group’s Swiss office doesn’t have a sail at all. Instead, it has a wing. The puffy, inflatable structure towers over the vessel, resembling an enormous meringue with a spine of stiff peaks. At sea, it cuts through the wind like an airplane wing, sending the sailboat flying across the water. Now Michelin wants to fit the technology onto cargo ships. The goal is to harness wind energy to reduce the use of diesel fuel—and thus curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The French tire maker unveiled its Wing Sail Mobility, or WISAMO, project earlier this month. The set-up operates with the push of a button. First, the telescopic mast rises from its base, reaching up to 17 meters high. The wing, which starts as a pile of fabric, slowly unfurls as a small air compressor inflates the double-sided material. As wind flows over the 93-square-meter wing, the variations in air pressure create lift, helping propel the vessel forward. When the ship approaches a bridge or encounters rough weather, the system automatically retracts.
Michelin estimates the wing can improve a ship’s fuel efficiency by up to 20 percent, based on measurements from technical tests and simulations, said Benoit Baisle-Dailliez, who leads Michelin’s WISAMO initiative. For a large container ship, that could mean avoiding burning tens of thousands of liters of fuel on a given day. The company plans to test the technology on a commercial freighter in 2022.
