Sniffer Technology News

A new aerial drone is being tested to monitor vessel emissions in the Great Belt, a busy shipping lane between the islands of Zealand and Funen in Denmark.Having previously been used for various surveillance tasks, the drone is being provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency to operate over the next four months in a specific area north of the Great Belt, which connects the Baltic Sea to the Kattegat strait and Atlantic Ocean.The drone will fly into ships' exhaust gas plumes and use its so-called “sniffer technology” to register the sulphur content in the fuel.

The Danish EPA has contracted Danish startup Explicit to monitor sulphur compliance from ships. The monitoring will be conducted from the air by sampling exhaust plumes from vessels in waters around Denmark. The operation will deploy a unique new sniffer technology developed by Explicit for easy-mount on helicopters – and eventually also drones. The objective is to detect and deter violations of the 0.10% ECA restriction on sulphur in the bunker fuel. Deploying a new, miniaturized measurement system, Danish entrepreneur Explicit has been contracted by the Danish EPA to perform airborne surveillance of the sulphur restrictions in Danish waters starting from July 2017.