Wijnne Barends equips multi-purpose vessel with scrubber

Download this pressrelease (pdf)

Wijnne Barends is proud to announce that its MV Lady Carina – together with MV Schippersgracht and MV Suomigracht of sister-company Spliethoff – is its first multi-purpose vessel equipped with a scrubber. Now the first three months of trialling are over, Wijnne Barends can look back at a successful scrubber installation.

The trial with scrubbers on board the multi-purpose vessels is another step in developing alternative compliance methods for the stricter SECA sulphur regulation. The gigantic shower uses seawater to reduce the vessels sulphur emissions to a level well below the 0.1% sulphur limit imposed by the IMO regulations for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, which has taken effect on January 1st, 2015.

“Thanks to scrubbers, Wijnne Barends will be able to uphold its transport services on the Baltic and North Sea”, says Ad Toonen, technical director of Wijnne Barends. “With the installation of scrubbers Wijnne Barends shows a big commitment to cleaner shipping. As a member of the Trident Alliance, we hope authorities will show the same commitment by enforcing the sulphur rules.”

The trial with scrubbers on multi-purpose vessels, which is now in its concluding phase, followed the successful installation of scrubbers onboard the six conro vessels of sister-company Transfennica. “Even more than the Transfennica conros, multi-purpose vessels have less redundant space on board. This complicates the installation of an exhaust gas cleaning system and may explain why until now there are so few multi-purpose vessels with scrubbers,” says Sjoerd Hupkes Wijnstra, environmental strategist for the Spliethoff Group.

In the period November 2014 through December 2014, MV Lady Carina was equipped with an Alfa Laval Pure SOx scrubber at the Alkor drydock in Gdansk, Poland. “It was hard work, everybody gave their best, and we can be proud of the results,” says Koen Wijnen, Wijnne Barends’ scrubber project leader. The scrubber is single inlet (connected to the vessels MAK M32 main engine of 2880 kW). Its tower is placed aft of the vessels accommodation and the pumps are squeezed in the engine room. The scrubbers clean practically all sulphur from the exhaust gas rendering the sulphur emissions far below the legal requirement.

The European Union co-financed the scrubber trial with MV Schippersgracht, MV Suomigracht and MV Lady Carina under the TEN-T funding programme.