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Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

independent.co.uk

1–10 of 155 posts

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#3
> the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions.

This should be a crime

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#4
I guess the new law reads "Can't release sulphur into atmosphere", so the shipping companies were thinking of ways around that. Why not say "Can't release … into environment", which would cover air, sea, ground, space and everything else around us?

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#5
Shipping is a pretty dirty industry, because of fuel quality they use and the general lack of oversight in the middle of the ocean.

I was on the board of Corvus Energy (http://corvusenergy.com) while working in Norway, whose technology reduces CO2, SOx, NOx, and fuel consumption by up to 30%. One installation was the equivalent of taking 10,000 cars off of the road. Thankfully, there are developments in this space.

Bear in mind that shipping is also the most energy efficient form of bulk transportation (vs land or air).

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#6

> the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions. This should be a crime

Probably hard to do in international waters but the bigger countries could always just say that any vessel doing this is blacklisted from docking in their ports. Every ship operator would just retrofit their vessels if that were to occur.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#7
I was wondering what it would take to replace a current container ship by a sail boat, like a clipper. Apparently, each container ship has more or less a 100 times the tonnage of a clipper.

Independently of the speed of the ships, the cost of the crews would probably kill the idea, except for goods with a very high margin, but there must a fuel price (including carbon tax) where this should become economically viable again.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#8

Shipping is a pretty dirty industry, because of fuel quality they use and the general lack of oversight in the middle of the ocean. I was on the board of Corvus Energy ( http://corvusenergy.com ) while working in Norway, whose technology reduces CO2, SOx, NOx, and fuel consumption by up to 30%. One installation was the equivalent of taking 10,000 cars off of the road. Thankfully, there are developments in this space.…

Don't forget the noise pollution:

https://www.marineinsight.com/environment/effects-of-noise-p...

https://ocr.org/sounds/shipping-noise/

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#9
post #7

I was wondering what it would take to replace a current container ship by a sail boat, like a clipper. Apparently, each container ship has more or less a 100 times the tonnage of a clipper. Independently of the speed of the ships, the cost of the crews would probably kill the idea, except for goods with a very high margin, but there must a fuel price (including carbon tax) where this should become economically viable…

There are lots of experiments and even production ships with sails these days. Google for "sails on container ships" for lots of nice pictures and articles.

The sails don't look like historic sails - they are often rotors that look like cylinders.

Maersk's Pelican, for example, is supposed to get 10% from its rotor sails.

Tangent: why do wind turbines look so conventional, with their propellers? There is a lot online about vertical axis wind turbines etc, but I've never seen one.

Re: Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea

#10

Shipping is a pretty dirty industry, because of fuel quality they use and the general lack of oversight in the middle of the ocean. I was on the board of Corvus Energy ( http://corvusenergy.com ) while working in Norway, whose technology reduces CO2, SOx, NOx, and fuel consumption by up to 30%. One installation was the equivalent of taking 10,000 cars off of the road. Thankfully, there are developments in this space.…

If it reduces fuel consumption by 30%, wouldn't all ships want to have it? Is it too expensive, or what is the problem?
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