More vessels clean up their act

The order represents a vote of confidence for the PureSOx scrubber from a leading shipping company which wants to clean up its act before the IMO suplhur emission regulations come into force in January 2015.

It will also no doubt help ports better meet their green targets. Anne Kirstine Senderovitz, Alfa Laval, told GreenPort: “A maximum of 0.1 % sulphur is allowed in EU ports today. This is however only for auxiliary engines or boilers that are operating for a longer period while the vessels are at rest in harbour but not for the main engines which are running all the way into harbour. The PureSOx scrubber will also remove the sulphur and particle emissions from the main engines while the vessels are approaching harbour.”

DFDS first installed Alfa Laval’s PureSOx on the Ficaria Seaways in 2009, and following this success, DFDS decided to fit the equipment to two sister ships of Ficaria Seaways, namely Petunia Seaways and Magnolia Seaways, each of which is powered by a MAN 9L60MC-C main engine of 21,000kW. The other ship to be retrofitted is the Selandia Seaways, powered by two four-stroke GMT Sulzer 9ZA 50S engines.

Alfa Laval says that installation of PureSOx will enable the three ro-ro vessels to continue to use heavy fuel oil with a high sulphur content, yet comply with the future SOx emissions limit. The company adds that installing PureSOx and continuing to run on HFO will result in fuel cost savings of 30% to 40%, depending on the price differential between high-sulphur HFO and distillate fuels.

DFDS says that the PureSOx systems will “wash” the sulphur content in the exhaust gas from heavy fuel oil with a sulphur content of 2.2% to a level below 0.1%.

The retrofitting is due to take place in July 2013.