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Bunker revolution ?

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by TSI AV, Apr 7, 2008.

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  1. TSI AV, Apr 7, 2008
    #1
    TSI AV

    TSI AV Senior Member

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    Mar 21, 2006
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    Estonia
    Hi everyone,

    Well, this message is not directly related to yachting, but could be of interest for all marine engineers.


    Bunker revolution as residuals banned
    IMO’S MEPC has agreed a revision to Marpol Annex VI, banning the burning of residual fuel oil from 2020. After that date, Marpol will specify fuels of such low sulphur content that fuels oils will not be able to comply. This will mean burning marine gasoil (MGO) in Emission Control Areas (ECAs) and marine diesel oil (MDO) in all other areas. So unless the oil refiners can find a way of reducing the sulphur content of fuel oil below 0.5% without using an enormous amount of energy to do it, heavy fuel oil is out. Although 2020 is the cut-off date, IMO has made great efforts to clean up shipping’s environmental impact much sooner than that. From March 2010, ECAs will have a sulphur cap of 1%. This will almost certainly mean using MDO as it is difficult and costly to get residual fuels of less than 1% sulphur. In 2015 this will become 0.1%, forcing a move to Marine Gasoil as MDO cannot reasonably be reduced below 0.5% sulphur. Elsewhere in the world a global cap of 3.5% sulphur will apply from 2012, so use of low-sulphur residual fuels will continue for a while. The IMO secretary general, Efthimios Mitropoulos told Fairplay that “Shipping had to do something. If we had done nothing, we would have had regulations forced upon us.”


    Guys, all comments are welcome !

    Regards,

    Andrei
  2. Codger, Apr 7, 2008
    #2
    Codger

    Codger YF Wisdom Dept.

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    There was a case made for dilution of residuals with bio-diesel so that the final product mix ended up at under 1% sulphur. Do you know if that proposal had any legs or did it just go away?
  3. Marmot, Apr 7, 2008
    #3
    Marmot

    Marmot Senior Member

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    It still has legs but is limping along for the moment. Until the supply of bio-diesel meeting a world-wide standard is large enough to support the industry not much can happen. A ban should move things along rapidly. The makers of large slow-speed diesels are all working on the issue.

    At the moment, the generally high and variable acidity of bio-fuels is a problem for fuel system components on large slow speed diesels. The instability of bio-fuels and the high potential for incompatibility with HFO is too risky. A bio-fuel blend also increases NOx emissions which is just as much of a problem (if not more) than SOx emissions at present.

    There is more to the issue than just getting the sulfur out, at least when talking about marine diesel applications.