The company has been assigned to equip Langh Ship’s vessels, operating in the sulphur emission control area (SECA). This area includes the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the English Channel, North American coastal area and the US Caribbean Sea areas. All ships operating in the SECA area must then limit emissions to correspond with the use of fuel with a sulphur content of less than 0.1%. The current limit is 1%. To switch over to low sulphur light distillates leads to increase in operating costs. A more economical solution is to use an exhaust gas cleaning system, which reduces the sulphur content of the exhaust gases accordingly.
DeltaLangh offers a closed loop scrubber solution, which cleans the scrubber’s washing water. The system uses caustic soda to clean the exhaust gas. The water content of the residual sludge from the patented water treatment process is very low and therefore minimises the amount of waste. The scrubber can alternatively be used in an open loop mode with sea water.
The scrubber, originally developed by Langh Ship, has already been in operation for one year onboard M/S Laura, a 6500 DWT general cargo vessel equipped with a 6 MW main engine. “The exhaust gas cleaning technology onboard M/S Laura was accepted already earlier but now also the documentation is finalised and officially classed by Germanishcer Lloyd,” said Robert Segercrantz, MD at DeltaLangh.
New directive
The installations are expected to be in operation on 1 January 2015 when the new sulphur directive comes into force.