EMEA News
Finnish Ship Owner Develops Own Cost-Efficient Scrubber
Finnish ship owner Langh Ship says it has developed its own emissions scrubber system, which it says allows one of its vessels to sail in the North and Baltic Sea with high-sulfur bunkers without the expense of buying a system from an outside vendor.
"We requested quotations on scrubbers, but the offers we were getting were just too high to seriously consider installing them in used vessels," said Managing Director Hans Langh.
Instead, the company created closed-loop scrubbers that reduce sulfur emissions more than switching to 0.1 percent sulfur fuel.
Langh said switching to marine gas oil (MGO) would be the only practical way to reduce sulfur to the 0.1 percent level mandated starting in 2015, and the change would increase fuel prices by more than $300 per tonne.
The company was able to develop the new scrubber system in-house thanks to experience that another Langh family company has in cleaning washing waters.
Regulations allow for the use of an open loop scrubber system, in which impurities are discharged into the sea.
"For us, however, it was important that our scrubber be based on a closed loop system, whereby the requirement is for the washing waters used in the process to be cleaned so as to separate the harmful substances," said Reino Verosaari, Langh Ship's senior technical adviser
The system, which received funding from the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), was installed in the M/S Laura in May, and the ship has since received special permission from the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Trafi.
Langh Ship now plans to install the system in its four other vessels and to offer it to other ship owners.
The M/S Laura is a 6,535 dead-weight-tonne (dwt) multi-purpose vessel, according to the company's website.
Niels Smedegaard of Danish shipping and logistics company DFDS said last month that European nations should help shippers with the cost of scrubbers to adapt to emissions rules.
