Using additives to reduce emissions and achieve compliance

Arq chief executive and founder Julian Mcintyre then explained how his company is looking to revolutionise the fuel industry by extracting and marketing waste product from the coal industry. He pointed out that over 1Bn tonnes of coal waste is discarded each year – the equivalent of throwing away over 5M barrels of oil a day. Arq is extracting and processing that waste and transforming it into a usable fuel source.

The environmental benefits of utilising waste product in this manner can help shipping on its pathway to becoming carbon neutral, explained Mr Mcintyre. “We can support the shipping industry in the immediate future with a transition fuel that is highly scalable, and which can help to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint,” he said.

In terms of the relevancy to the maritime industry, Mr Mcintyre highlighted four key gains: “The additive is very low cost and that allows us to pass significant cost savings on to our customers; secondly, for every barrel of fuel oil that displace, we deliver about a 40% environmental improvement; thirdly, our component is designed to work in the existing supply chains and engines of our customers; and finally we have plans to scale very rapidly, so that we will be able to deliver millions of tonnes per annum of raw material over the next three to five years.”

During the webinar, the audience was polled on the following question:

What is the immediate focus and expectations of the marine industry from additive companies?

Lower costs: 20%

Reduce operating risk :61%

Reduce emissions: 19%

Presenting next was Innospec technical services engineer - Marine Fuel Specialties Joshua Townley, who began by discussing the recent changes to marine fuel. He explained that the composition of a typical high sulphur fuel oil is highly aromatic, containing around 15% asphaltenes, which cause sludge over time, with minimal paraffin or saturate content. “When you look to VLSFO,” he said, “you see much higher concentration of paraffins. These come mostly from secondary cracked or low-cost streams, which may be less resistant to ageing than straight-run fields. VLSFOs still have a significant aromatic and asphaltene content, which are known to be unstable in a highly paraffinic blend and which may partially explain the reduced storage stability of these VLSFO fuels.”

Mr Townley explained that the change towards a more paraffinic blend means modern marine fuels come with a fresh set of challenges: they generally have a much lower viscosity and become unstable in the presence of high temperatures or pressures, such as those found in purifiers, fuel pumps, and injectors. He added that they are still prone to wax dropout and high bar points, meaning a careful balancing act is required on board vessels.

He pointed out that by returning and maintaining the optimum running condition of an engine, fuel consumption and C0₂ emissions can be reduced by 3%. “Efficiency in the marine industry must be viewed as the maximum extraction of energy from whatever fuel we choose to use, now and in the future,” he said. “Fleet performance begins in the storage tank and we’ve shown that if you treat the fuel, you minimise wasted fuel sludge, prevent unplanned maintenance of machinery, and ensure a more complete and clean combustion that reduces both fuel consumption and harmful emissions.”

Bringing the presentations to a close, Croda Europe lead applications scientist - energy technologies Matt Fazakerley returned to the issues of testing and compatibility.

“Stability is inherent to a single fuel,” he said. “When bulk fuel is stored it can become unstable and the asphaltene protein content can precipitate out causing the formation of sludge. Any sludge that forms in the tank will need to be manually removed and this is costly and time consuming.”

Mr Fazakerley explained that switching fuels can also lead to unpumpable residues and blocked filters and pipes. “With VLSFOs this can happen after a short time period in comparison to heavy fuel oil,” he noted.

On the subject of compatibility, Mr Fazakerley said that when bunkering fuels from different ports, it is imperative that the two fuels are compatible. “Industry best practices is to avoid mixing fuels from different sources and to store different fuel types separately until compatibility tests have been carried out, but this isn’t always possible,” he warned.

Further complications stemmed from testing, because there is some uncertainty in terms of how VLSFOs and additives can combine to influence the result, said Mr Fazakerley.

“Tests were originally developed for aromatic fuels and the result indicates the amount of sediment that could form under various conditions, but not necessarily the likelihood for the sediment to form. Therefore, a fuel could fail this test both with and without an asphaltene stabilising additive,” explained Mr Fazakerley.

“Conversely,” he continued, “a fuel can pass the total sediment tests or give a result that indicates a potentially unstable fuel using alternative tests.”

During the webinar, the audience was polled on the following question

Are you concerned about the stability of your fuel during storage of two months or more?

Yes: 80%

No: 20%