On-board test installation cleaning all exhaust gases to meet the IMO Annex VI obligations in 2015/2020.

The adoption of IMO Annex VI for the maritime industry was motivated by the need to reduce the global and local impact of harmful emissions from ships. Especially, there has been high focus on sulphur emissions and to reduce these in areas entitled sulphu r emission control areas (SECA) later entitled emission control areas (ECA) to include other substances of emissions into the regulations. Extensive sea areas, in Europe, US and Canada, is defined as ECA allowing use of fuels with a highest sulphur conte nt of 0.1 % from 2015, down from 4.5 % percent in previous times. Globally this limit will be set for all sea areas at 0.5 % in 2020. An interesting technique allowed for by the IMO Annex VI is the Exhaust Gas Cleaning System (EGCS) to reduce SOx emissio ns as an alternative to use of lighter fuels with lower sulphur content. The technique is designed to remove sulfur oxides, but there are reasons to believe that the technology also will reduce PM species from the combustion processes. The technologies' a bility to reduce the different fractions of PM is explored in ongoing research projects. There are uncertainties regarding particle distribution outcome from combustion processes with basis in lighter or heavier fuels and which of these have highest healt h impact. In this context, from a precautionary point of view, there might be a need in the future to clean combustion products from both light and heavy fuels. Until now, exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) on-board vessels have had limited coverage; i. e. either the main engine or the auxiliary engines have been connected to the EGCS. The industry is now in this project willing to explore the EGCS technology potential to its full extent in its real environment by running a full scale hybrid test install ation that clean exhaust from both the main propulsion engine and the auxiliary engines.