Lightweight scrubber requires no ship structure strengthening

According to Clean Marine, the newly developed SOx scrubber reduces infrastructure weight by more than two thirds, leading to significant capex savings on the scrubber and no need to strengthen the ship structure prior to installation.

The simplified scrubber also reduces installation time from five weeks to three weeks, thereby cutting docking costs significantly too. A pre-fabricated electric room is one of the solutions that reduces the installation time. All critical components on the open-deck scrubber are protected from harsh sea conditions. The Clean Marine scrubber technology has been fitted to smaller tankers such as 19,000-dwt chemical carriers.

Clean Marine’s chief executive Nils Høy-Petersen said “Our new scrubber application is significantly more competitive than other scrubber applications on the market and compared to the alternative of using low sulphur fuels to meet the IMO 2020 standards. This development is in response to many shipowners requesting both lower capex and opex levels for marine scrubbers while being able to satisfy the IMO 2020 emission level requirements.”

The compact ’naked’ scrubber is a hybrid scrubber than can run with both open and closed loop, thereby avoiding conflict with ports that have prohibited open loop scrubbers. It can easily be inspected and maintained by the vessel crew to maximise operational uptime.

The scrubber is made of high grade stainless-steel material and is easily incorporated with the ship’s boilers. It comes with a proven zero back pressure construction that has already had more than 10,000 hours of operation with boilers in the past few years. Favourable placement of electronics and simplified cable connections make it easy to install and maintain, which is often a time-consuming process during the installation.

Mr Høy-Petersen commented “The big shipowners with a clear sustainability profile and plan seem largely unaffected by recent industry discussions. However, we believe this next-generation scrubber application could make it easier for other smaller shipowning companies to opt for a scrubber solution.”

Clean Marine believes its technology has become one of the most favoured solutions for shipowners in the maritime and shipping industries, where zero backpressure and boiler connections has been in focus. As a result, the company’s revenues trebled from 2016 to 2018. Further, Clean Marine expects 2019 revenues to be six to seven times higher than in 2018.

“It is fair to say that the scrubber market has slowed down in recent months, but we have invested in production capacity worldwide that allows us to handle large orders and shorten delivery times. Our current order backlog requires us to deliver 8-10 exhaust gas systems per month in the run-up to IMO 2020. Instead of operating the vessels in the turmoil of January 2020, it could be beneficial to install a scrubber during that difficult time. We still have available production slots for shipowners that require scrubbers for delivery early 2020,” said Mr Høy-Petersen.

Clean Marine’s Singapore general manager Eirik Dahlberg is taking part in the EGCSA initiatives and scrubber technology session at the Asian Sulphur Cap 2020 Conference in Singapore on 15-16 October 2019.