Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, in an article discussing IMO compliance, notes that scubber technology remains the most viable technology. Excerpts: “How does all this fit into the industries search for lowering harmful emissions? Well as there is yet to emerge a single fuel that is clean and has negligible harmful emissions, the cheapest and probably best alternative right now seems to be the scrubber. Scrubbers work by physically and chemically cleaning the harmful emissions inside the exhaust. This is done by spraying water over the gas in the smokestack and then either discharging it into the ocean in the case of open loop systems, or cleaning the water through the use of chemicals or filters, and then reusing the water again in the case of closed loop scrubbers.
This is possibly a better interim solution for commercial shipping emissions, as LNG powered vessels can be more costly to buy and maintain, while retrofitting a vessel to run on LNG will probably cost more than a scrubber in most cases, especially when taking into consideration the technical and space restricting challenges that are usually involved in the case of switching to LNG”, Allied’s analyst concluded.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
