Penalties for breaking environmental laws at sea are becoming tougher as regulatory bodies set new emission standards for an increasing number of maritime zones. SKF has launched the BlueMon monitoring system, in order to avoid the heavy fines that can be imposed.
Legal conventions on pollution (such as MARPOL) are becoming stricter, covering everything from greenhouse gases and liquid pollutants to soot and other fine particle emissions. Consequences of non-compliance range from more frequent inspections and harsher fines, to a complete ban on entering a nation’s ports.
While emissions from engine exhausts, bilge water separators, sewage systems, and incinerators have been methodically checked for decades, previously this has been a decentralised process, with values being measured separately – often by crew members with insufficient training for the job. SKF sais that one solution is to implement a central system that takes measurements from various sources of onboard emissions, adding a time stamp and GPS coordinates.
According to the company, SKF’s BlueMon system automates the measurement and logging process, taking into account the ship’s location and adjusting emissions limits compliant with those of the maritime zone in which the ship is moving. The system senses when a maritime boundary is being crossed (at which point, different regulations may apply) alerting the captain if the current emissions exceed the limits for that zone. If necessary, to meet differing emission limits, additional treatment can be initiated.
The system comprises a central data logger connected to a PC running a software engine relevant to each of the Annexes to the MARPOL regulations, which will monitor the respective emissions. All data is displayed for at-a-glance viewing.
“The user can switch between views that show geographical maps with the ship’s current position and emission zones, and a clearly laid out overview of the current emission values. This view displays the emission values set forth in MARPOL Annex 1 – together with a graphical representation of the bilge water system – all on a single screen.” the company says.
At the moment, the BlueMon system is self-contained, being restricted to the ship itself. However, SKF has informed that the technical possibility of ship-to-shore transmission is likely to be introduced in the next 18 months, similar in many ways to current onboard condition-based monitoring (CBM) systems which are able to transmit CBM data back to shore for remote, expert analysis, and allowing appropriate remedial actions to be relayed back to the ship’s crew.
Source & Image credit: SKF
