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DeltaLangh Brings Closed Loop Scrubber to the Market

Maritime Activity Reports, Inc.

June 2, 2014

  • Langh Ship’s vessel M/S Laura
  • Image courtesy of Deltamarin
  • Langh Ship’s vessel M/S Laura Langh Ship’s vessel M/S Laura
  • Image courtesy of Deltamarin Image courtesy of Deltamarin

Deltamarin Ltd. and Oy Langh Ship Ab have come together to offer a cost effective and reliable solution to the sulphur requirements with the scrubber that Langh Ship has developed. The new scrubber is delivered by a joint venture company DeltaLangh Ltd., and it can also be supplied on a turnkey basis.

As the new sulphur directive in the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) comes into force in 2015, shipping companies are forced to choose a method to tackle the challenge. The new scrubber solution offered by DeltaLangh, provides shipping companies with a unique environmentally friendly closed loop scrubber solution – already tested in operation on Langh Ship’s vessel M/S Laura during one year. Based on the excellent experiences collected so far, Langh Ship has decided to equip their additional four vessels with the similar systems to be supplied by DeltaLangh.

In the SECA area, which includes the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the English Channel, North American coastal area and the U.S. Caribbean Sea areas, all ships must use fuel with a sulphur content of less than 0.1% starting from January 1, 2015 (current limit 1%). To switch over to light distillates with lower sulphur content is quite expensive and leads to increase in transport costs. A more economical solution is to use an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber), which reduces the sulphur content of the exhaust gases accordingly.

Langh Ship’s five vessels all traffic in the SECA area and so the company had to react to the new regulations. After reviewing the alternative scrubbers available at that time, Langh Ship’s Managing Director Hans Langh decided to reach for even better performance and cost efficiency. Based on the 40 year long experience of water treatment systems that Mr Langh had from another family company, Industrial and Ship Cleaning Services Hans Langh, he set up a large product development project aiming to engineer a reliable closed loop scrubber. The result of this vast work is now to be seen: a fully functional scrubber with a water treatment unit that cleans the scrubber’s washing water very efficiently. Performance of the water treatment is also unique as the water content of residual sludge is minimal.

The first full scale scrubber installation has now been in operation for one year onboard M/S Laura, a 6,500 DWT general cargo vessel equipped with a 6 MW main engine. Without interruptions or down times, the system has been in operation and fully functional year round, even through Baltic winter and ice conditions. “The scrubber has proved to be very easy to operate, stable and does not add much extra workload for the crew,” said Langh Ship’s Senior Technical Adviser Reino Verosaari, who has been strongly involved in the project. The equipment is classified by DNV GL.

Deltamarin has over 20 years’ experience in ship design and in project management. As the market is changing radically and the need for major retrofits to meet the rules has become evident, Deltamarin has decided to expand into hardware deliveries. “When we heard about the new innovative solution that Langh Ship had come up with, we knew that this was the product Deltamarin wants to be involved in,” said Mika Laurilehto, Managing Director at Deltamarin.

The new joint venture DeltaLangh will utilise the long experience of both companies to offer the best solution in the market. “The scrubber has been such a success that we are sure it will benefit other shipowners as well,” said Laura Langh-Lagerlöf, Commercial Manager at Langh Ship.
 

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