Wärtsilä to fit carbon-capture ‘ready’ scrubbers

Leonhardt & Blumberg will have three 3,600 TEU container vessels retrofitted with 27.5 MW scrubbers which Wärtsilä says are ‘ready’ to become carbon capture and storage (CCS) devices.

The systems will be installed at Greentec Marine Engineering in China, and are CCS ‘ready’ insofar as Wärtsilä will perform extra engineering and design work to ensure that CCS can be implemented at a later date.

“We are working hard to operate our fleet in the most sustainable way possible,” said Tim Goettsche, Leonhardt & Blumberg Fleet Manager. “This retrofit project with Wärtsilä’s advanced exhaust treatment system represents an exciting step forward in reducing GHG emissions with CCS technology. It will give our ships a head-start in being compliant with future regulatory requirements.”

Though CCS is available for ships currently, it is not yet a mature technology, and yields considerably high costs as vessels increase their use of fuel to provide sufficient energy for the treatment. The success of any CCS technology is also sensitive to developments on land, and contingent both on ports to provide suitable carbon-removal services, and on governments to provide enough underground storage capacity.

However, if shipping can properly implement the technology, it would enable ships to continue to run cheap heavy fuel oil (HFO), for which there is a developed infrastructure and enormous industry expertise, in contrast to green ammonia, green methanol, and other new-generation fuels.