The shipping industry is one of the world’s biggest polluters. New regulations set by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to reduce Sulphur content in shipping exhaust fumes, is seeing ship owners ‘cheat’ the system in a bid to be ‘compliant’ by the 2020 deadline.

Shockingly, many ship owners are choosing to simply dump the toxic metals and Sulphur from the exhaust straight into our oceans. There has been enough press surrounding the plastic pollution crisis for us not to have to tell you where the pollutants in our waterways end up.

IMO 2020 regulations

The IMO has set a deadline of 2020 for the maritime industry to reduce Sulphur content in exhaust fumes from 3.5% to 0.5%. Ship owners are rushing to find a solution and unfortunately, we are witnessing an acceleration on the fitment of exhaust cleaning systems called ‘open scrubbers’ in order to comply with the law. This is an ‘emissions cheat’.

  • Scrubbers cost $3m to fit a new build ship and $4m to retrofit to an old ship
  • Industry analysts predict 3,400 ships are likely to install scrubbers to avoid paying for the cleaner fuel
  • Many shipping companies can’t rely on oil refineries to develop and produce sufficient low-Sulphur fuel to meet their needs. The cleaner fuel that is produced will be expensive

For us, this situation is not good enough. The intention to fit open scrubbers demonstrates a lack of ethics and a disregard for our shared responsibility to look after our planet.

Premature deaths and childhood asthma

A report in the International Journal of Science, Nature, states 400,000 premature deaths a year are caused by emissions from dirty shipping fuel, which also accounts for 14 million childhood cases of Asthma per year.

  • Scrubbers wash the exhaust with atomised water sprays, which clean out the ‘nasties’ including toxic metals and Sulphur
  • This toxic residue then flows straight into the sea. Some ships even ze the watery residue and drop it to the ocean bed in a separate trick to get around other supplementary regulations to limit waste being pumped into the sea

It does not need to be this way.

SulNOx fuel emulsifiers offer a green solution

SulNOx provides a viable alternative. Our fuel and oil products significantly improve engine performance and combustion and reduce harmful emissions including SOx, NOx and other pollutants.

We are undergoing trials with shipping companies, for our Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) emulsifier product. These enlightened companies have turned to us for a low-cost and readily available solution to ensure they are compliant with the IMO 2020 regulations.

To find out more about our fuel emulsifier products and our shipping industry trial results, please get in touch today.

Posted Jan 16, 2019

Reproduction of this information is with kind permission from SulNOx