MEPC Meeting on emission control

Next week will see the 72nd MEPC meeting at IMO in London.
Norwegian Shipowners Association and the Government has prepared a joint stand to be put forward at the meeting:

Another MEPC issue that is hot; ballast water management.
DNV has issued "checklist for preparation of PSC inspection:


Are you up to speed on this when visiting foreign ports??

Opening statement by the IMO Secretary-General:
http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/SecretaryGeneral/Secretary-GeneralsSpeechesToMeetings/Pages/ISWG-GHG3opening.aspx

Another subject to be brought up at the MEPC meeting:

I’ll applaud them when they change the rules so that technology firms can certify engines based on what comes out the stack (ala SOx scrubbers) rather than limit NOx and particulate reduction and certification to the engine builders.

Are they interested in what comes out the stack or who gets the money? The current regs are making it virtually impossible for lower power high speed diesel engine end users to obtain certificated engines.

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MARPOL Annex VI sets limits on NOx and SOx emissions from ship exhausts, and prohibits deliberate emissions of ozone depleting substances:
https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/inter/imo.php

Here is a quick and easy guide to Tire II & III SOX and NOX limitations:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imo-tier-iii-2016-limitations-nox-sox-opti̇ma-marine-ltd-/

What are the typical daily emissions from the entire world fleet of ships?

How does that compare to the daily emissions of one major city like LA or Beijing?

I am skeptical about whether worthwhile emissions reduction efforts are being focused in the right place.

18 to 30 percent of world NOx, 9 percent of world sulfur oxides, 3-4 percent of world greenhouse gases.

From Fairplay today:

Obvious solutions are:

For the short term, immediately ban heavy fuel.

Countries can become more self reliant and use more locally made goods that do not have large environmental costs due to long distance transport, or

Return to the age of sail.

Sail could become competitive again, if the emissions taxes and fines on petroleum burning ships are set high enough.

As people in California and Europe might say, its for the environment, no cost is too high. Whatever it is, we just have to pay for it.

I had a 1AE tell me emphatically that HFO gives significantly more miles per volume of fuel so if we switched all our tanks over to diesel we’d lose significant range. (I’d love to hear from engineers whether that’s true.)

There are already a few cargo sail vessels trading again as eco friendly, super green alternatives.

Yes, it’s true. Running at 85% MCR we typically run between 3.3 and 3.5 cubic meters per hour on IFO 380 depending on the batch of fuel. On MGO we peg our flow meter at 3.7 cubes an hour, but we’re probably closer to 3.8 or 3.9 for actual consumption. That’s with an MAN slow speed prime mover. We typically try to get some time under our belt while outside of the ECA so that we can run slower when we’re inside and save some fuel.

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Heavier Fuel Oils have a higher energy content than distillates.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/energy-content-d_868.html

Engineers use heating value, BTUs per pound or kilogram. Heavy fuel oil has less, not more heating value than distillates per unit of weight which is how fuel burns, by weight, not volume.

To complete the silliness, what kind of gallon? US or ? What temperature?

Just stating that heavy oil has more BTU per gallon is meaningless. The 1st A/E was correct about requiring more volume of distillate to travel the same distance is correct but if he had said it took less weight of distillate fuel it would have been a better representation of the heating value of the fuel.

Yes, that is true but I was addressing @Capt_Phoenix and @Louisd75 posts. Barrels per mile is not the same as Tons per mile. My counterpart always ordered fuel in Barrels, I ordered fuel in Tons.

That may be but a tank can only hold a certain volume of liquid so BTU per volume is what really matters to a ship.

For practical day to day operation I’ve always gone by volume, but that’s also how the systems have been set up. All of the TLIs, sounding tables and flowmeters come back with volume, not weight. We’ve got the temperature correction tables on board to convert from volume to weight, but there aren’t any temp readouts on our tanks (yeah, it’s awesome). Our fuel orders are done based off of weight, not volume. I believe that’s per the office’s request.

Back to the ongoing meeting on MEPC.
Here is a contrary point of view from most:

A possible compromise in the MEPC negotiations?:


The US proposal that no outright reduction goal for shipping was needed has been sidelined.

Bunker quality and several other issues concerning bunkering to be considered at MEPC:
https://ibia.net/mepc-72-several-of-issues-relating-to-bunker-fuel-on-the-agenda/