Scrubbers 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.

Wärtsilä is now offering carbon capture and storage (CCS) feasibility studies to shipowners and operators. Studies have already been conducted on a range of vessel types including ro-ro and ro-pax vessels, a drill ship, a container vessel and a gas carrier.The process takes four to six months of study and design work. Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment’s experts are involved in ship design at an early stage to conduct engineering work to understand how CCS can be smoothly integrated once…

“Scrubbers were installed on 399 ships in 2022, a fall of 24% y/y, and currently 13% of bulker, container, and tanker ships have a scrubber installed. Despite the slowing rate of installations, the share of ships with a scrubber is set to increase in coming years as 17% of ships in the shipyards’ order books are expected to have a scrubber installed,” says Niels Rasmussen, Chief Shipping Analyst at BIMCO.Since January 1, 2020, ships have had to use ultra or low sulphur fuel (eg ULSFO or VLSFO) to comply with limits for sulphur emissions.

Wärtsilä received its first order for carbon capture and storage-ready scrubber systems - CCS-Ready scrubbers.Wärtsilä said that four 8,200 TEU container vessels, being built at undisclosed Asian-based yard, would be fitted with Wärtsilä’s CCS-Ready 35MW scrubber in an open loop configuration.The scrubbers are termed CCS-Ready because, as part of their installation, Wärtsilä will perform additional design and engineering work to ensure that future retrofits for a full CCS system on the vessels have already been accounted for during the newbuilding construction stage…

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…

A new barge is being built to help capture and treat stack exhaust from vessels in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.Produced and operated by Clean Air Engineering - Maritime, Inc. (CAE-M), based in San Pedro, Calif., the self-propelled barge will carry a vessel stack exhaust capture and treatment system called the Marine Exhaust Treatment System (METS-3), designed by Fassmer Technical Projects toremove diesel emissions from the auxiliary engines and boilers of ocean-going vessels while at berth or anchor.Nicholas Tonsich…

U.S. shipowner Eagle Bulk's 2018 decision to outfit the majority of its dry bulk fleet with scrubbers has proven to be an environmentally sound and profitable decision, with an expected payback on investment by the end of 2022.The company's CEO Gary Vogel and Chief Strategy Officer Costa Tsoutsoplides said in a recent trade press interview that Eagle Bulk answered the MARPOL 2020 0.5% emissions ceiling with a $100 million investment to equip 47 ships—89% of its fleet of supramaxes and ultramaxes—with CR Ocean Engineering (CROE) scrubbers.Having already recorded $60 million of fuel savings…

Oldendorff Carriers signed a deal last week in Oslo with Yara Marine for the installation of U-type scrubbers on two newbuild capesize vessels.Torsten Barenthin, Oldendorff Carriers' Director of Innovation, and Aleksander Askeland, Yara Marine Technologies' (YMT) Chief Sales Officer, have signed an agreement for the first installation of YMT’s new U-type SOx scrubbers on board two bulk carriers at the Nor-Shipping conference and exhibition in Oslo on Wednesday, 6 April 2022. This…

VDL AEC Maritime received an order for the delivery of two retrofit scrubber systems to Seatrade Groningen BV. With this order VDL AEC Maritime extends its portfolio for the first time in their own home country, ánd to a Dutch ship-owner. The two SOx-scrubber systems will be delivered and installed before the end of 2022.Seatrade is an international shipping company with a global footprint, a leader in specialized refrigerated shipping and logistics. The globally established group of companies has its head office in Curacao and comprises a worldwide network of offices…

Wärtsilä won a new agreement for its exhaust gas cleaning systems to be installed on two newbuild 218m RoRo passenger vessels (RoPax) at Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI) in China.Signed in February 2022, the contract calls for Wärtsilä to fit and commission two 25-MWV-SOx hybrid scrubber systems, which can run in both open and closed loop configurations, on each vessel. With the systems, RoPax vessels will immediately comply with the 0.5% Global SulfurCap and will also be futureproofed against impending regulatory change…

Valmet reports that it has tested a first-of-a-kind scrubber and wet electrostatic precipitator combination and cut exhaust gas emissions in a marine diesel engine by up to 99%. The solution potentially could allow shipping companies to lower their particle matter and black carbon emission levels, while benefitting the environment and helping to meet tightening emission regulations.The pilot testing and configuration project was carried out together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd (VTT).Up to date…

When scrubbers were first discussed as a mainstream solution for shipowners to meet strict new emission targets demanded IMO2020, chief concerns centered on size and weight of the new units. Wärtsilä launched its new IQ Series exhaust gas treatment system, designed by its Exhaust Treatment business unit in Moss, Norway, and touted as smaller and lighter.The IQ Series is the latest advancement in maritime exhaust gas treatment technologies, and it features several improvements that make the technology especially well-suited to container vessels…

Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment will install its open loop exhaust gas abatement technology on two roll-on/roll-off passenger ferries owned by Spanish company Trasmed GLE S.L., which is part of the multinational logistics company Grimaldi Group.Trasmed GLE S.L. has selected four of Wärtsilä’s I-SOx open loop scrubbers with exhaust de-plume systems for the RoPax vessels Volcan del Teide and Ciudad de Granada, which operate in the Mediterranean Sea. Each vessel will have four scrubbers installed, one on each main engine.

As the marine industry moves toward decarbonization, partnerships that transcend technologies and borders will increasingly play a prominent role. In this regard, Alfa Laval and Japan’s National Maritime Research Institute (NMRI) today announced positive resultes on an innovative carbon capture and storage (CCS) test.Initiated by NMRI, the CO2 capture testing project was designed to provide real-world validation of results achieved in the lab. It required a full-scale hybrid scrubber system, and Alfa Laval's PureSOx was used..

Berge Bulk has returned to Yara Marine Technologies for additional in-line scrubbers in a new retrofit deal aiming to help the dry bulk shipowner to reduce emissions from its vessels.Berge Bulk is currently on a journey to zero carbon operations, and Yara Marine has already installed in-line scrubbers on about 30 of its bulk carriers."We have had good experiences using Yara Marine for emissions reduction. They have already provided several of our vessels with efficient, safe, and reliable scrubbers.

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…

As the lion’s share of the world fleet replaced high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) with low-sulphur fuel oil (LFSO) as a mean of propulsion to be compliant with the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) 2020 global sulphur cap that came into force on January 1, 2020, overall bunker sales rose in the world’s by far largest bunkering hub: Singapore.Total bunker sale volumes grew by 5% in 2020 and have continued to climb in the first two months of 2021 (+2.7% y/y),a n indication of the shipping industry’s ability to deliver all the way through the pandemic.

Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment said exhaust gas abatement systems, also known as scrubbers, may soon be used to directly tackle maritime carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as technology advances enable manufacturers to design and upgrade scrubbers to capture carbon at the point of exhaust.Wärtsilä said it has found carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be developed and scaled for ships, and that the solution is technically viable for the sector to pursue among a range of solutions helping to drive decarbonization in shipping…

Texas-based hydraulic repair, manufacturing and rental company Logan Industries says will offer a high-alloy welding scrubber repair service from all coasts of the U.S. for the global marine shipping and cruise line industries.Exhaust scrubbers enable a ship to maximize the use of lower cost fuel while minimizing harmful emissions. Installed in the diesel engine exhaust stacks in ships, scrubbers provide a water shower that rains down in the exhaust stack while the fumes rise up and out.

Valmet is enhancing emission control with its patented and fully automatic water treatment solution for the marine scrubber system and exhaust gas recirculation system. Valmet Marine Water Treatment system consists of four different modules that are designed to be easily fit in different vessel layouts. Due to the layout flexibility, the water treatment system can be installed both in new building vessels as well as retrofits.Valmet has designed its marine water treatment systems with the environment and ease-of-use in mind…

We have known it all along; the bigger the bunker fuel consumption of the ship, the more likely it is that shipowners will choose an SOx scrubber as the tool to comply with the IMO 2020 sulfur cap.Whiles only three Handysize bulkers in total have been delivered from the newbuilding yards with a scrubber fitted in 2020, one in three Handymax bulkers were delivered with scrubbers installed.Most scrubber-fitted bulkers were delivered in the Panamax sub-sector, that saw 81 units out of 150…

Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Co., part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, says its DIA-SOx marine scrubbers have been installed on 22 ships during the last eight months.The builder said the installations were completed as scheduled despite the continued spread of COVID-19 globally through remote commissioning conducted via close communication and cooperation with its local partners' engineers in China and Singapore.The  DIA-SOx lineup consists of the R Series and C Series.

Containerships with a collective cargo carrying capacity of 5.3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) are now fitted with an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber) to remove sulphur oxides (SOx) from the exhaust gasses generated by the combustion processes in marine engines and thereby comply with the IMO 2020 global sulphur regulation which came into force on January 1, 2020.By the start of July, the share of the containership fleet with scrubbers installed exceeded that of the crude oil tanker fleet.