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Despite ship operators’ slow uptake of exhaust scrubbers in the face of growing sulphur, carbon and nitrogen emission limits, some are predicting a big role for the technology in coming years.Scrubbing units applied to the exhaust stacks of ships and land-based emitting installations remove,to varying efficiencies, the toxic and climate-changing pollutant gases that are increasingly the focus of environmental regulation. While the technology is proven in the case of cleaning sulphur and nitrous oxides, SOx and NOx, the jury is still out on claims of breakthroughs in carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubbing.
However, in the next few years, it will be a significant tightening of global, regional and local-authority rules on sulphur emissions at sea and in port that will drive any uptake of scrubbers. For the moment, the high upfront cost of installing them, especially retrofitting to old vessels, is proving a major barrier. There is also environmental pressure from some quarters on operators to pursue cleaner fuel options rather than persisting with dirty fuel and scrubbing it. There is a vague threat the EU will ban heavy bunker fuel entirely in its waters.
But significant doubts over whether fuel refiners can produce enough low-sulphur fuel to meet the needs of the international shipping fleet in coming years means that alternatives such as switching to liquid natural gas (LNG) or installing SOx scrubbers are under increasing consideration. The best scrubbing technologies appear able to remove up to 98 per cent of sulphur content from marine exhaust emissions.
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http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15144:shippings-dilemma-as-sulphur-rules-tighten&catid=46:top-story-b&Itemid=151
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