I saw an article in Fortune entitled, "Raw Power," which pertains to the "Wartsila RT-flex96C 14-cylinder two-stroke low speed diesel marine engine." Luckily, the article translates this into plain English--"the most powerful internal-combustion engine ever built." After reading so much about hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles and how the internal combustion engine may someday be a thing of the past, I wondered how cutting edge this engine could be, no matter how powerful it is. Apparently, it's pretty impressive in that it powers the world's largest container vessel, called the Emma Maersk. This ship is 1,300 feet long and can travel from Shanghai to Los Angeles with 11,000 containers in a little over a week, by moving at a rate of 29 miles per hour. It sounds rather frightening when you read just how much energy this ship uses--80,080 kilowatts, which is enough to power 70,000 homes. Yet, when I really stopped to think about it, until we discontinue buying goods from overseas, which is very unlikely, we need to have an efficient means of delivering those goods. At least the ship does have some interesting ways of conserving energy. The article indicates that "exhaust is redirected to turbochargers that reuse heat to generate more electricity--saving 20 gallons of heavy diesel fuel per kilowatt produced." I found this concept of reusing heat to generate other electricity very interesting and I wondered whether it could be done in other settings, as in the home or in businesses. Another question was whether a coal-fired power plant, which produces a lot of steam, can convert some of this hot air into more power instead of the bulk of it going up through the smokestack. Sometimes we need to start small and build up with innovation but in this case, maybe the largest containership in the world can inspire a better use of power on a smaller scale.