Sulfur Limitation Should Prevent“After Effect”

Reporter Liu Xiao

With increasing attention of the international community on the pollutants discharged by ships, the sulfur emission control area (SECA) includes not only the original Baltic Sea and Beihai Sea, it has also included North America and the Caribbean region, and the related ports of EU. Undoubtedly, the emergence of SECA area is revolutionary for promoting environmental protection,but we still cannot refrain from admitting that the scheme to resolve this problem at present has more or less "defects", and the problem of ship safety caused by it is also coming to the surface.

A chief engineer told reporter that the advantages of the tail gas cleaning technology is very obvious. After using this modification technology, the ship can continue to use ordinary fuel oil in some SECA regions. With respect to the use of expensive MGO, the owners' cost control is very favorable, especially when the oil price is high. However, in the eyes of the owner, the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme are also outstanding.Firstly, from the perspective of the ship operational safety, there are some problems. Secondly, the purchase,transportation, storage and waste residue (or waste liquid) of the pharmacy is the most difficult problem for the owner. According to the interviewer, currently,the ports throughout the world which is able to accept the program of the waste disposal of the port is less and less. The behind reason is the security consideration of the port. Finally, the most tangled issue for the owners is that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) does not accept the fl ue gas cleaning system as the equivalent processing method of low sulfur oil, this also means that even owners spend large sum of money for installation of the exhaust gas cleaning device, and exhaust emissions meet less than 0.1% sulfur content fuel exhaust effect, it is still unable to meet the requirements of California and the ship can not carry goods in this region.

In addition, it is necessary to mention the security risk of the way of switching low sulfur oil. In April this year, in order to make shippers pay attention to the risk of ship using low-sulfur oil, the Swedish insurance indemnity association deliberately released an accident report on a ship's master fault due to replacement of low sulfur oil. An insider said after seeing the report provided by the reporter: "we do understand the report's implication.There are two sets of data we have to mention. In July 2014, there were 93 ship accidents due to lost propulsion capability, and 15 of them are directly caused by fuel oil switch to meet the low sulfur emission restrictions,which accounted for 16.1% of such accidents. He added,this probability should not be generalized, but it can illustrate that some security risks still need enough attention by the shipping industry.