Steaming Cargo Ships

[Slowboat35]

I've only recently noticed that some of the large commercial vessels using Harwich/Felixstowe are emitting a considerable cloud of white vapour from their funnels. It doesn't persist and I assume it is water vapour but in decades of watching ships I've never seen diesel vessels doing this. Is it me - or is it something new? new fuel, scrubbers - what? The Stena car ferry was one.

 

[neil_s]

Brittainy Ferries from Portsmouth, also.

 

[Poignard]

Exhaust scrubbers

 

[penfold]

Scrubbers; they allow the use of >0.5% sulphur HFO without busting the SOx limit. MARPOL annex 6 rules changed january last year and dropped the max sulphur content allowed for ships without scrubbers.

 

[newtothis]

Scrubbers are brilliant devices. They mix exhaust with sea water to remove the sulphur so that it doesn't get into the atmosphere and create acid rain.
Instead, the scrubber water goes direct to the sea and cuts out the middle man.

 

[penfold]

Scrubbers are brilliant devices. They mix exhaust with sea water to remove the sulphur so that it doesn't get into the atmosphere and create acid rain.
Instead, the scrubber water goes direct to the sea and cuts out the middle man.

Open cycle scrubbers kill Patrick and Spongebob though, so it very much needs to be a stopgap solution; it's also a giant maintenance headache as the amount of seawater used is vast, it all corrodes with alacrity as no supernintendo will pay for materials that might resist the sulphurous salty mush that comes out the other end. Semi-closed cycle scrubbers are pretty complicated and use other vile chemicals to neutralise the vile chemicals in the sulphurous salty mush, which introduces more components made of stuff that corrodes because the super is a tight git. All things considered I'm looking forward to when ships are powered by fusion, it will be much simpler.*




* may not be true.