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

independent.co.uk

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

#31

Post by cies »

newguy1234 wrote: post #6
spdegabrielle wrote: post #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

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.

Exactly. I was gonna say that by some international port blacklist we can easily punish them, and of force them to make a huuuuuge donation to a clean-up fund in order to have the ban lifted.

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

#32

Post by contingencies »

Didn't read the article but I met a Danish fellow doing laser prop shaft alignment on Friday night in Shenzhen. He told me there are packed out waiting lists for the installation of these devices right around China right now. Until then, I'd never heard of them.

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

#33

Post by jonasvp »

seren wrote: 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…

Check out https://fairtransport.eu/, they've been doing that for over 10 years. The story of Captain Gustaf Erikson is also instructive in that regard: https://postcarbonlogistics.org/2019/06/28/captain-eriksons-...

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

#34

Post by throw0101a »

mogadsheu wrote: post #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.…

> Shipping is a pretty dirty industry, because of fuel quality ...

You're not wrong, but no one else is/was using bunker fuel, so might as well burn it, as what else can it be used for? Can it be processed into anything more useful?

(The IMO 2020 mandate may help clean things up.)

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

I was under the impression that rail transport was. Is that not correct?

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

#36

Post by lultimouomo »

pnako wrote: post #14
seren wrote: 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…

But maybe you don't need crews, and ships that big. Perhaps it would be viable to operate a semi-autonomous fleet of dozens or hundreds of medium-sized wind-powered ships; it's possible that wind turbines + battery + electric engine would be better than sail. A trimaran could accommodate wind turbines and a certain number of standard containers that would also act as ballast. COLREGs probably prevent unmanned ships,…

Ships need to be big to go fast (or they need to plane but that's probably hard to do while carrying cargo).

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

#37

Post by pnutjam »

pnako wrote: post #14
seren wrote: 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…

But maybe you don't need crews, and ships that big. Perhaps it would be viable to operate a semi-autonomous fleet of dozens or hundreds of medium-sized wind-powered ships; it's possible that wind turbines + battery + electric engine would be better than sail. A trimaran could accommodate wind turbines and a certain number of standard containers that would also act as ballast. COLREGs probably prevent unmanned ships,…

Anyone read the "shipbreaker" novels by Paolo Bacigalupi. Good sci-fi that deals with this.

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

#38

Post by willvarfar »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16
willvarfar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I forget the details but vertical axis wind turbines are always less efficient than horizontal axis turbines. Off the top of my head I can't recall if the reason is that vertical axis turbines always have half of the rotor turning against the wind, but there is a basic reason I believe can be found on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_axis_wind_turbine says

> research at Caltech has also shown that a carefully designed wind farm using VAWTs can have an output power ten times that of a HAWT wind farm of the same size

etc

The cups on the normal wind speed sensor have less drag into the wind.

It would be easy to imagine a VAWT where a computer knew the wind direction and feathered the blades on the back sweep etc?

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

#39

Post by esyir »

dogma1138 wrote: post #26
sdfmmkmsdfmk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In shipping the cost is transferred easily down the line; capital investment in new vessels and new technologies is pretty slim because of that. Also the time spent in dry dock might as well cost you more than what you’ll gain through the service time of the vessel since many of these vessels change hands frequently sometimes even several times a year. Also because how risk is managed in the shipping industry none of…

Hm, really stupid naive question here. What happens if violating ships were basically seized

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

#40

Post by seren »

pnutjam wrote: post #37
pnako wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But maybe you don't need crews, and ships that big. Perhaps it would be viable to operate a semi-autonomous fleet of dozens or hundreds of medium-sized wind-powered ships; it's possible that wind turbines + battery + electric engine would be better than sail. A trimaran could accommodate wind turbines and a certain number of standard containers that would also act as ballast. COLREGs probably prevent unmanned ships,…

Anyone read the "shipbreaker" novels by Paolo Bacigalupi. Good sci-fi that deals with this.

Now that are you talking about it, I probably got the idea unconsciously from "Tool of war", which is the 3rd book in Shipbreaker serie (haven't read the first 2 books)
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