At a recent forum in Singapore, jointly organised by International Bunker Industry Association (IBIA), Lloyd’s Register (IR) and Methanol Institute, the potential for shipping to use scrubbers, LNG and methanol was discussed. Apart from these three options, a more direct way to meet the regulatory requirement is to use compliant fuels such as marine gas oil (MGO) or low-sulphur fuel oil (LSFO).
The use of exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS), or scrubbers, would allow ships to continue burning high-sulphur fuel oil as the abatement technology can remove 90-99% of sulphur oxides (SOx).
The use of scrubbers, however, is considered a low-hanging fruit for shipping as the technology is unable to curb the release of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas emission that is also being closely watched by IMO and environmentalists.
“The use of EGCS will not be a long term solution for shipping,” commented Prapisala Thepsithar, senior scientist/project lead at Energy Research Institute of Nanyang Technological University (NTU). “Owners have continued to adopt a wait-and-see approach on installing scrubbers,” Thepsithar said, due in part to the high capital outlay of retrofitting the ships.
Thepsithar shared that the cost of equipping one 12-megawatt capacity engine with a hybrid scrubber system is around $3.5m, including engineering/design, installation/commissioning, and training and documentation. The cost would go up to $5.7m for a larger 36-megawatt capacity engine.
Tony Regan, managing director of DataFusion Associates, raised the oft-talked-about option of LNG as fuel. While Regan believed there are no supply issues for LNG, the challenging state of the shipping industry marked by losses has resulted in owners’ reluctance to commit to using the clean gas.
“A LNG-fuelled ship costs about 20-30% more than conventional ships, and a good-sized LNG bunker tanker would cost around $60-80m, vastly more costly than a fuel oil barge,” Regan said.
“The driver for LNG bunkering will really be down to the regulators, not economic incentives,” he said. The use of LNG as fuel has been hindered by a need for huge investments in building up a network of infrastructure to facilitate bunkering on a global scale.
The use of LNG has a disadvantage similar to the use of scrubbers in terms of the inability to cut emission of CO2. While there are virtually no emissions of SOx, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particular matter (PM) from burning LNG, the level of CO2 emission is only slightly lower in LNG use compared to high-sulphur bunker fuel.
Methanol as fuel, another option for shipping, is much less “marketed” to shipping compared to LNG, according to Bengt Ramne, managing director of ScandiNAOS, a Swedish ship design firm. Apart from losing the “PR war” to LNG, methanol is in fact compliant with IMO’s sulphur limits and readily available, Ramne said.
“The current global bunkering infrastructure needs only minor modifications to handle methanol, and the costs involved are relatively modest compared those needed to build up LNG bunkering infrastructure,” he said.
Ramne pointed out that Stena Line Group has embarked on using methanol as fuel since 2013, converting four main engines on the 51,837-gt cruise ferry Stena Germanica to hybrid fuel of methanol-diesel operation.
Bob Thornton, marine technical director at World Fuel Services (WFS), said WFS has talked to its customers about the 2020 regulation and their answers are mostly “like a shrug – we don’t know what we’re going to do so we’ll probably go with gas oil.”
Thornton said: “The customer is faced with so many choices – gas oil, ultra low sulphur heavy fuel oil, hybrid fuel, scrubbers, methanol, LNG and other alternative fuels. It's like a kid in a candy store – too many things to choose from – and I only have two pennies to buy it with, so I will go with plain vanilla.”
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. Seatrade, a trading name of Informa Markets (UK) Limited. Add Seatrade Maritime News to your Google News feed.
