Deeply concerned with the adverse impact of the harmful emissions, the international, regional and national laws will have to evolve and adopt the new regulations in the interest of environmental safety. Other than CO2, ships produce some very harmful emissions such as sulphur oxides (Sox) and nitrous oxides (NOx) which are the products of combustion. We have to think of ways and means of reducing these emissions. As for sulphur is concerned, low sulphur oil or distillates can be used which will make a good difference; emissions can be scrubbed to clean them, on the other hand, before they pass into the atmosphere. Or, feasibly enough, liquefied natural gas that burns cleanly can be used. Engine manufacturers also can contribute their share by designing efficient marine engines that burn less fuels thereby producing less of emissions. And, as for NOx is concerned, exhaust gas recirculation can be used; it is a system that does not put in the exhausts direct into the atmosphere, but, instead, it cleans, cools and recirculates the gas back into the engines, thus reducing the amount of NOx that is generated in the combustion chamber. The real challenge is not so much with the new designed ships but with the fleet of ships built according to the regulations that obtained then with the expectation of life-span for 20-25 years. It is possible to “retrofit” exhaust gas cleaning systems to the existing machinery so that they can comply with the tighter emissions control. Though the ships built before certain dates could be allowed to sail through their full span of life , it is quite possible that the pressures from the users of the ships who would like to use cleaner and greener ships might encourage changes for the better.Fine words butter no parsnips; actions speak louder than words.
No comments:
Post a Comment