Technology group Wärtsilä has added carbon capture and storage (CCS) feasibility studies to its portfolio of products intended for shipowners and operators.
The company has already conducted a number of studies on a range of vessel types including ro-ro and ro-pax vessels, a drill ship, a container vessel, and a gas carrier as part of its efforts to accelerate the trajectory of CCS in shipping.
As explained, the process takes four to six months of study and design work. During this period, Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment’s experts are involved in ship design at an early stage to conduct engineering work to understand how CCS can be smoothly integrated once the technology is launched to market.
The option is available for both newbuild and existing vessels.
Installation of CCS onboard vessels already fitted with scrubbers is much smoother due to a convergence of pre-existing infrastructure and technical compatibility.
During the feasibility studies, Wärtsilä’s experts closely examine the existing naval architecture of the ship and work to understand how the power, space and exhaust demands of CCS can be accommodated onboard.
Once completed, the CCS feasibility study work enables Wärtsilä to provide an analysis of the costs of CCS integration, and a clear list of considerations on how a potential retrofit would be conducted in the least intrusive way. Thus offer can then be shared with shipyards to get an exact quote for installation.
“Launching these feasibility studies and being able to offer them to market is the exciting latest step in our process of bringing carbon capture and storage to market in shipping. It builds on the market-leading work we are conducting in our test hall in Moss, where our technology is already demonstrating our targeted 70% capture rate, and enables us to directly engage with customers to smooth the CCS adoption process in the near future,” Sigurd Jenssen , Director, Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment, said.
“By conducting these studies today, we are already building a track record and understanding of how this technology will work across multiple vessel types. It builds on the considerable uptake we have already seen for our CCS-Ready scrubbers, which show that the industry is not only exploring CCS as a speculative technology, but is actively investing in its foundations as a decarbonisation solution.”
The studies are also aimed at educating the industry on the upsides and particular considerations associated with installing CCS onboard their vessels, and they will run in parallel with the implementation of new environmental regulations for shipping, therefore the company believes that owners who conduct them today will be ‘ahead of the curve’ versus their peers.
Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment said that it already offers CCS-Ready scrubbers to the market, which are integrated onboard in a way that enables a CCS system to be added easily in the future once the technology is commercialized.