COMPLIANCE MONITORING OF SULFUR EMISSIONS FROM SHIPS

Combination of Custom Software & Unique Optical System for On-Ship and Remote Monitoring

Ships emit large quantities of air pollutants and it is necessary to reduce these to improve air quality and negative environmental impact. The IMO Marpol annex VI protocol and EU directive 2012/33/EU requires an order of magnitude lower sulfur fuel content 2015 in environmental control areas (North Europe and US waters) and NOx abatement technique for ships built from 2016.

There will be considerable extra cost for ship transport (50-70%), i.e. typically 10 kEuros/day. There will hence be considerable economic incentive not to comply with the new rules.

COMPLIANCE MONITORING OF SULFUR EMISSIONS FROM SHIPS

Today the fuel of the ships is controlled by a few random checks of bunker delivery notes, fuel logs and occasional fuel sample analyses in harbors. There is no available technique able to control what fuel is used in the open sea and in general it is considered easy to tamper with the usage of fuel, especially since ships are using several tanks, often with different fuel.

Johan Mellqvist of Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden has working over the past 8 years, to develop measurement tools for compliance monitoring with demonstrated measurements and results.

The system they developed creates an automatic compliance monitoring system which can be installed on aircraft, fixed sites near shipping lanes, and coastguard vessels

The uniqueness of the solution lies in the innovative combination of techniques, a custom made software that provides automatic real time monitoring and a unique optical system for remote operation from airplanes and to screen ships at berth.