Wärtsilä Hails World's Largest Scrubber System

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Thursday June 9, 2016

Wärtsilä Corporation (Wärtsilä) Thursday announced that Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL)'s newest vessel, Harmony of the Seas - the world's largest cruise ship - also features the world's biggest marine exhaust scrubber installation.

Wärtsilä says it provided the vessel with its two hybrid scrubber systems, allowing the vessel to minimise its sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions and "comply with emission control regulations around the world."

Wärtsilä tech features elsewhere on the vessel too, including its four 12-cylinder Wärtsilä 46F engines and two 16-cylinder Wärtsilä 46F engines, offering the vessel "best-in-class fuel economy."

This, and other energy efficiency improvements, means that Harmony of the Seas is 20 percent more fuel efficient than its sister vessels, the Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas.

Despite these much improved environmental credentials, this has not prevented environmental activists using Harmony of the Seas' recent arrival in Barcelona as an opportunity to highlight pollution concerns caused by such mega-cruise ships.

In November, Yara Marine Technologies (Yara) announced that a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel, the M/V Norwegian Escape, had set sail from Hamburg, Germany featuring five of Yara's sulfur oxide (SOx) scrubbers, which the company said was the biggest scrubber system of its kind in the world at the time.

Ship & Bunker News Team
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