In order to meet climate change mitigation targets, the shipping industry must change to an alternative fuel. From a ship design perspective, the switch to an alternative fuel is often a downgrade with respect to the use of conventional fuels. For instance, most alternative fuels have a low energy density, rely on technology that is not fully developed or on systems with a short lifetime. The choice for an alternative fuel is therefore difficult to make, and many aspects from different disciplines must be considered. Though much research is being done on the implications of choosing different alternative fuels, iron powder as a marine fuel is not often considered. The use of iron powder as a fuel formaritime applications is only recently proposed and the technology is in its infancy. It has some suitable properties to be used as a marine fuel though. This research aims to investigate how the choice of iron as a fuel affects the ships design and performance.

To that end, a parametric design model is developed for container ships, with which the design space of these iron fuelled ships can quickly be explored. It was chosen to design the model specifically for container ships, because iron has good volumetric energy density, but poor gravimetric energy density. Because of that, iron suits volume carriers more than deadweight carriers. The model generates a multitude of preliminary ship designs as a function of some operational requirements. Using the results from the model, design trends can be identified withing the design space. The potential performance of the ship designs are assessed using some key performance indicators.

It is found that iron fuelled ships are feasible and can be economically viable for certain operational profiles.Based on contemporary freight rates, iron fuelled ships are best used for short voyages at low speed. This is mostly caused by the high mass of iron, which reduces the viability of operating the ship when a large
energy storage capacity is required. The main dimensions of iron fuelled container ships are driven by the total weight of the ship whilst minimising resistance. That makes iron fuelled container ships deadweight
carriers rather than volume carriers. Finally, the economic performance of iron fuelled ships is compared to that of other alternative fuels. It was found that iron fuelled ships are less profitable than ships running on other alternatives.