Wärtsilä scrubber knocks SOx off emissions

The recently awarded certification is an important recognition of the Finnish manufacturer’s intensive and long lasting development work and is the first ever marine scrubber to be awarded this certification. A marine scrubber is an after treatment technology for cleaning exhaust gases of sulphuric oxides. Wärtsilä’s scrubbers offer a proven solution for markedly lowering sulphur oxide emissions, thereby benefiting the environment.

Arnauld Filancia, director of marketing at services, Wärtsilä Corporation, said, ‘This certification demonstrates very clearly that the Wärtsilä scrubbing technology works well and is an efficient solution in marine applications. We constantly seek, support and combine technologies that offer our customers similar environmental and economic benefits.’

The full-size SOx scrubber test plant was installed on board the MS Suula, and was used to clean the exhaust gases from the ship’s four cylinder inline Wärtsilä 20 auxiliary diesel engine. This Neste Oil owned, Finnish registered product tanker operates mainly in the SECA Baltic Sea area, where regulations governing sulphuric oxide emissions are very stringent.

The tests were performed with both high sulphur (3.4%) and low sulphur (1.5%) heavy fuel oil, and verified that the Wärtsilä scrubber system efficiently removes SOx from the exhaust gases. The measurements, which were part of the certification process and made by an accredited independent body, demonstrated a sulphur dioxide removal efficiency exceeding 99% in all operating conditions, even when using high sulphur fuel. This high level of efficiency was consistent throughout the load range and with all fuels. The efficiency of nitrogen oxides removal was 3% to 7%. The removal of particulate matter was in the range of 30% to 60%.

Wärtsilä says scrubbing exhaust gases is an environmentally friendly and cost effective alternative for reducing sulphur oxide emissions down to 0.1%. The Wärtsilä SOx scrubber system complies with the new IMO Guidelines, adopted in July 2009, for cleaning the exhaust emissions from all two and four stroke engines, including main and auxiliary engines, as well as from oil fired boilers, in retrofits and newbuilding ships.

The SECA Compliance Certificate is the culmination of a project, initiated by Wärtsilä in 2005, to identify feasible solutions and to investigate exhaust gas scrubbing as an alternative to the use of low sulphur fuels.