Wash Water News

The discharge of scrubber water from ships out to 22km (12 nautical miles) from the Danish coasts will be prohibited by law. The ban will come into effect on July 1, 2025, for ships with scrubbers in open operation, where the wash water is discharged into the sea. For ships with scrubbers in closed operation, the ban on water discharge will take effect on July 1, 2029.The Ministry of Environment has stated that scrubber water has contributed to excessive levels of a number of heavy metals and tar substances such as lead, cadmium, anthracene and benz(a)pyrene in the marine environment.

Value Maritime announced it has completed the first in a series of nine installations of its emissions reducing Filtree systems for product and chemical tanker company Ardmore Shipping Corporation.Taking place in China, this was the first time that Value Maritime has installed its system outside of Europe. The Ardmore Seaventure is also the first Ardmore vessel now fully equipped with Value Maritime’s Filtree system. The remaining installations for Ardmore Shipping are scheduled…

The combined emissions of metals and other environmentally hazardous substances from ships is putting the marine environment at risk according to a new study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.The researchers calculated the contaminant load from these emissions into the marine environment in four ports, and found that water discharged from ships’ scrubbers accounts for most of the contaminants.“The results speak for themselves. Stricter regulation of discharge water from scrubbers is crucial to reduce the deterioration of the marine environment…

In recent years, Greek shipowner Safe Bulkers has retrofitted Alfa Laval PureSOx exhaust gas cleaning systems on 20 of its bulk carriers. The company has just installed its 21st PureSOx scrubber, and four more retrofits are scheduled through the first half of 2023.Safe Bulkers is expanding the retrofit program for exhaust gas cleaning within its fleet. Having now retrofitted an open-loop PureSOx system on the MV Pelopidas, the company will retrofit equivalent systems on four Capesize bulk carriers: MV Aghia Sofia, MV Lake Despina, MV Maria and MV Michalis H.

Stolt Tankers and Stolthaven Terminals have partnered to remove and sustainably treat wastewater from ships docked in Houston.In June 2021 the two divisions began a pilot program to identify and balance the challenges, costs and benefits of treating washwater from ships at Stolthaven Houston's onsite wastewater treatment plant. The facility, which has been operational for more than 20 years, was expanded and modernized in 2018, allowing the terminal to increase its capability to treat third-party waste.Discharging onshore is not mandatory…

The technology group Wärtsilä and Danish ship operator A.P. Moller - Maersk have provided a means for preventing corrosion in scrubber discharge pipes. The permanent in-pipe solution is designed to solve corrosion problems associated with open-loop scrubber washwater discharge.The majority of the estimated 5,000 scrubber systems installed across the global fleet are of open-loop configuration. With this system, seawater is used to scrub SOx from the exhaust gas, with the used water then being discharged back to the sea after cleaning.Under IMO Guidelines…

Singapore's Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) signed a definitive agreement with Rotterdam-based Value Maritime (VM) to install carbon capture and filtering systems on MR tankers M/T Pacific Cobalt and M/T Pacific Gold, with an option to equip three more vessels. The installation of the first system is scheduled to be completed within 2022 with engineering and planning underway.The 2020-built, 49,700 DWT sister vessels, will be fitted with VM’s Filtree System – a prefabricated gas cleaning system that is designed to filter sulfur and 99% of particulate matter.

Wärtsilä and the Grimaldi Group have unveiled a system that uses exhaust gas scrubber washwater to tackle microplastics in the world’s oceans.According to the association Plastic Europe, 368 million tonnes of plastic were produced in 2019 worldwide, and around 3%, or 11.4 million tonnes, of this plastic ultimately ends up in the ocean. To tackle the growing amount of microplastics in the world’s seas, Grimaldi has developed and patented a system that filters out microplastics from open loop scrubber washwater.Wärtsilä, in partnership with the Neapolitan group, will take the microplastics filtration system - which traps plastic particles before the washwater is returned to the ocean - to market.

Nor-Shipping 2022 has announced that four nominations have been shortlisted for the prestigious Young Entrepreneur Award, following in the footsteps of previous winners including Boyan Slat, founder of Ocean Cleanup, and the Brim Explorer management team of Agnes Árnadóttir and Espen Larsen-Hakkebo. This time round André Risholm, Founder & CEO, Amon Maritime, Cristina Aleixendri, COO, Bound 4 Blue, Christiaan Nijst, Founder & Director, Value Maritime, and Maria Waagsnes, CEO, Norsjór will be contesting for the title.

Expectations are high that exhaust gas scrubber technology demand will soon be resurge. But what lessons have been learned from installations and which type will dominate?Installing scrubber systems on ships that were never envisaged to have them on board has brought well documented challenges for older tonnage, with accurate drawings and documents sometimes hard to source. Where class documentation is concerned, meanwhile, different societies can have subtly different requirements…

Canadian shipping company Algoma Central Corporation was fined $500,000 in the U.S. after pleading guilty to dumping wastewater into Lake Ontario.One of the Great Lakes operator's dry bulk carriers, the Algoma Strongfield, was built in China and delivered to Canada on May 30, 2017, by a crew from Redwise Maritime Services, B.V., a vessel transport company based in the Netherlands.During the delivery voyage, while manned by a Redwise crew, the oily water separator and oil content monitor malfunctioned or failed on multiple occasions, which resulted in an accumulation of unprocessed oily bilge water. On May 5, 2017, an Algoma employee…

CR OCEAN ENGINEERING L.L.C. (CROE) and Oberlin Filter Company are partnering to provide an automatic, low-maintenance washwater filtration system to supplement CROE’s closed loop and hybrid exhaust gas cleaning systems (also known as scrubbers). The Oberlin filter is a cleaning system that cleans the closed loop washwater and removes the sludge in a dry/solid form, allowing for reduction in volume and lower disposal cost. For clients requiring wet/pumpable sludge disposal, CROE…

European technology giant Wärtsilä will be supplying hybrid scrubber system packages for Norwegian Cruise Line's (NCL) Norwegian Breakaway and Norwegian Getaway.According to a press note from Wärtsilä, the scrubber systems have been ‘specially customized to meet the specific needs’ of the two cruise ships – which included adapting ‘to meet the ships’ restricted space availability’.The scrubber systems will enable the 325 meters long cruise vessels to be in compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) sulfur restriction legislation while operating on heavy fuel oil (HFO). The legislation became effective in January 2020.

Members of the Clean Shipping Alliance 2020 expressed disappointment in regard to Malaysia’s recently-announced decision to prohibit the use of open-loop scrubbers in its coastal waters. The Malaysia Shipping Notice states that ships calling to Malaysian Ports are advised to change over to compliant fuel oil or change over to closed-loop/hybrid systems before entering Malaysian waters and ports.“We are disappointed in this announcement,” said CSA 2020 Chairman Capt. Mike Kaczmarek. “The decision will impact not only our member shipping companies, but over 200 other international shipping companies that have announced their intent to install scrubbers as an accepted means of compliance under MARPOL Annex VI.“We will of course comply with these national rules…

Malaysia has prohibited the use of open-loop scrubbers by ships plying Malaysian waters, as Southeast Asia's third-largest economy joins the growing number of nations adopting new industry guidelines on reducing sea pollution.New regulations from the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) will require shippers to adopt more environmentally-friendly measures to manage their fleets, including reducing the sulphur content in fuels used in their vessels from Jan. 1 2020.In a notice issued to the shipping industry…

Chelsea Technologies, a leader in the design and manufacture of sensors for the maritime sector and a Sonardyne company, has announced the appointment of Elizabeth Paull as its new managing director. Paull, who joins the company from leading subsea technology developer Sonardyne International, has been appointed to further develop Chelsea Technologies as a market leader in environmental sensing technology across a variety of industry sectors, and particularly in maritime where…

Chelsea Technologies, a leader in the design and manufacture of sensors for the maritime sector, and a Sonardyne company, has announced that its Sea Sentry wash water monitoring system for ship exhaust gas cleaning systems has been awarded type approval by DNV-GL. This accreditation, combined with certification for its measurement protocols from Class NK and DNV-GL, assures shipowners and operators that all available measures have been taken to verify that Sea Sentry provides accurate and robust data on compliance with IMO Annex VI wash water discharge regulations.

Tested extensively both in the lab and in the hold, Wilhelmsen’s Unitor CargoClean HD further improves on the market-leading performance of its predecessor but requires just half the volume of chemicals previously needed.Refined several times before the Wilhelmsen team felt their complex alkaline micro emulsion cleaner was strong enough to test against the best of the rest onboard a vessel, the new concentrated formula of Unitor CargoClean HD consistently produced the best cleaning results.

South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) has decided to allow the use of exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) in its territorial waters and ports ahead of the IMO 2020 regulation.The Clean Shipping Alliance 2020 (CSA 2020) has welcomed the decision by SAMSA to accept all types of approved exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) for use in its territorial waters.In an IMO 2020 advisory notice issued in March to shipowners, operators, master mariners and bunker suppliers, SAMSA says the use of open-loop, closed-loop or hybrid systems are accepted until further notice “as an equivalent arrangement under Regulation 4 of MARPOL Annex VI…

The Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC) agreed to task its sub-committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) to look into the discharge from open-looped scrubbers, in particular the environmental impact of the washwater.This was decided at the meeting (MEPC 74) held last week, said a press release from BOMCO.During the meeting, several delegations expressed some fundamental concerns whether a scrubber system could constitute a more favourable treatment of ships equipped with a scrubber system (or Exhaust Gas Cleaning System), compared to ships using compliant fuel.Today, the industry is faced with many new national or regional rules on the water discharges from scrubbers.

Carnival Corporation has released the results of an independent, two-year scientific scrubber wash-water study.The study shows the company’s advanced air quality systems (i.e. scrubbers) are in compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) 2020 requirements, which include regulations for cleaner air emissions and strict wash-water quality standards.The study also concluded that the wash-water samples from scrubbers were below the limits set by several major national and international water quality and land-based water discharge standards, according to a press release.Focused specifically on analyzing the composition and quality of wash water from Advanced Air Quality Systems…

The port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates has decided to ban the use of a type of ship exhaust cleaner, becoming the latest location to impose restrictions on so-called open-loop scrubbers, a port document showed.In recent months, many shipping companies have opted to fit scrubbers onboard their ships, ahead of major changes in the use of marine fuel across the world.The International Maritime Organization (IMO) will prohibit ships from using fuels with sulphur content above 0.5 percent from Jan.

Key Middle East oil terminal bans open-loop scrubbersFujairah in the United Arab Emirates has become the latest major port to ban a type of fuel exhaust cleaning system to comply with a coming tightening in rules regarding global sulphur emissions, mirroring similar moves in Singapore and China.Under International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules that come into effect from 2020, ships will have to reduce the sulphur content in their fuel to less than 0.5 percent, compared with 3.5 percent now, forcing huge changes upon global shippers and also oil refiners.Fujairah's harbour master said in a faxed document seen by Reuters that the port "has decided to ban the use of open-loop scrubbers in its waters ...