Shipping industry looks at emissions detection, monitoring and innovation in fuels

“Since 2015, we have done 550 flight hours for fuel sulphur content [detection]; we monitored over 6,000 ships, and we observed 400 potential non-compliance vessels,” said Mr Scheldeman, “That is, in total, a non-compliance rate of almost 7%.”

PureteQ CEO Anders Skibdal said: “We measure everything. If you can measure it, you can manage it.” He was referring to the growth in demand from clients for data from their scrubber systems. PureteQ has a unique view in that, although it is a scrubber supplier, during the pandemic it pivoted to become one of the biggest service providers off all kinds and makes of scrubbers.

He added that the company has developed a platform that is free of charge to service contract clients that provides a dashboard of the data and functionality of the scrubber.

Through the dashboard, it is possible to see if the system is over-scrubbing: “If you are scrubbing too much, you are using way too much energy and impacting the environment,” he said.

One of the largest manufacturers of scrubbers, pre-pandemic, was Yara Marine Technologies, which had a sales pipeline of over 500 units, according to chief sales officer Aleksander Askeland. The company has pivoted to be a provider of green technologies: wind power, shore power, and fuel optimisation in combustion engines.

He said that this may seem like the company was moving away from scrubbers, but this is not the case: “We have also been busy during the [pandemic] period investing heavily in developing our scrubber portfolio. One significant achievement was developing a new pack bed scrubber.”

The aim is to reduce material usage and the energy required. The long-term observation from Mr Askeland was that: “We cannot dismiss the volume of heavy fuel that is out there. It has to be used,” he said. And that will require scrubbers.

In a similar vein, SEA-LNG chairman Peter Keller observed: “The maritime industry is probably one of the more difficult to decarbonise and will likely be one of the last to decarbonise.” One of the reasons heavy fuel oil has been the mainstay of shipping is due to energy density. Many of the new fuels have lower density and sometimes other issues, such as toxicity.

Mr Keller noted that LNG and LPG are familiar fuels and cargoes and their handling is well understood. “The pathway is low risk,” he said, “because it’s within technological bounds. We can use existing assets.”

"If you are scrubbing too much, you are using way too much energy and impacting the environment"

Lubrizol’s technical manager – marine engine oils, Ian Bown, said: “Within the marine space, our focus is really on developing packages, additive packages, for cylinder, and system oils, mainly in the two-stroke area.” The challenge for the lubrication manufacturers, set by MAN SE and WinGD, is to provide a 40 BN cylinder oil with the cleaning performance of a 100 BN cylinder oil. This is no easy task. Following the successful completion of a MAN Cat II main service test, Lubrizol was the first lubricant additive provider to be awarded a MAN No Objection Letter. Mr Bown noted that the research & development department is currently looking at all the new fuels, including ammonia, and their impact on lubricants.

“We have been working on alternate fuels for a few years now, trying to understand some of the elements that are going to help us to design the next generation of cylinder oil and system,” he said.

“The changes we went through from a lubricant standpoint with IMO 2020 pale in comparison to the transition that we are going to see through different formulations, different engineer technologies that we are going to need as we go through into a multi-fuel future,” said ExxonMobil brand manager, Aviation & Marine Lubricants Joseph Star.

The resulting drive is going to take marine engine technology to what is already present in on- and off-road highway engineering. This includes ways of combating oxidation.

“For every 10 degrees that the engine temperature goes up, the average lifespan of the oil decreases by half,” Mr Star said.

Increasing efficiency was a theme at MAP 2022 and was central to the presentation by TIMAB Magnesium’s chemical R&D engineer Sylvain Berthelot. TIMAB Magnesium was already established as a provider of magnesium hydroxides before entering the marine market in 2015. “We thought there was an opening in the [marine] market,” said Mr Berthelot, “based on two simple observations.”

The first was safety: caustic soda was widely used in closed- and open-loop scrubbers as an alkalinity restoration in scrubbing operations, but it is a toxic substance. Magnesium hydroxides are not caustic and do not require PPE.

The second was price variation: caustic soda prices can be unstable, according to Mr Berthelot.

Since 2015, TIMAC has been listening to the market, and in 2020, it patented anti-foaming technology, as requested by clients. Mr Berthelot added that the company had delivered more than 150 ships with magnesium hydroxide suspension for closed loop and hybrid systems from different scrubber manufacturers.

Be sure to join us for Marine Propulsion Webinar Week. Register here.