Dutch shipping company Spliethoff announced that it has equipped five of its ships with exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS).
Thanks to scrubbers, Spliethoff will be able to uphold its transport services connecting the Baltic with the North Sea and the US East Coast”, says Michael van de Heuvel, commercial director of Spliethoff. “With the installation of scrubbers Spliethoff shows a big commitment to cleaner shipping. As a member of the Trident Alliance, we hope authorities will show the same commitment by enforcing the sulphur rules.”
The trial with scrubbers on multi-purpose vessels, which is now in its concluding phase, followed the successful installation of scrubbers onboard the six conro vessels of sister-company Transfennica. “Even more than the Transfennica conros, multi-purpose vessels have less redundant space on board. This complicates the installation of an exhaust gas cleaning system and may explain why until now there are so few multi-purpose vessels with scrubbers,” says Sjoerd Hupkes Wijnstra, Spliethoff’s environmental strategist.
In the period December 2014 through January 2015, the Spliethoff vessels were equipped with an Alfa Laval Pure SOx scrubber at the Remontowa drydock in Gdansk, Poland. “It was hard work, everybody gave their best, and we can be proud of the results,” says Gerrit-Jan van Ommen, Spliethoff’s scrubber project leader. The scrubber is single inlet (connected to the vessels’ Wärtsillä main engine of 12’060kW). Its tower is placed aft of the vessels’ accommodation and the pumps are squeezed in the engine room. The scrubbers clean practically all sulphur from the exhaust gas, rendering the sulphur emissions far below the legal requirement.
The European Union co-financed the scrubber trial with MV Schippersgracht, MV Suomigracht and MV Lady Claudia) under the TEN-T funding programme.
Source & Image Credit: Spliethoff
