Norwegian Ships Retrofitted With Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems

Norwegian Cruise Line has announced the successful completion of the retrofitting of a new Exhaust Gas Cleaning system on two of its ships, Norwegian Sun and Norwegian Jade.

Norwegian has a ‘Sail & Sustain’ environmental program, and the new systems installed are aimed at significantly reducing air emissions and as a results the ships’ environmental footprints.

In early 2014 Norwegian Cruise Line was the first to commit to retrofitting six of its vessels, and has now gone over that commitment, having now installed the system on eight ships.

With the installation of the new technology into another two ships, Norwegian Cruise Line is continuing to show its dedication of applying safe and conservative environmental practices across the fleet.

The ships’ new lightweight in-line scrubbers are a hybrid technology developed by Yara Marine Technologies that are able to operate in open loop, closed loop and closed loop with bleed off mode. In each ship, five scrubbers were installed, one per engine, covering the whole propulsion system.  Collectively, they are capable of reducing the emission of sulfur to air up to 99 percent and also reduce 85 percent particulate emission to the air. Norwegian Jade and Norwegian Sun’s new technology will reduce the equivalent of approximately 3,000 tons of Sulfur Oxide, SOx, gas in the years to come.

The new system works by “scrubbing away” the sulfur oxide and particulate matter before the emissions leave the stack to decrease the amount that is released into the air, resulting in a clean white plume of steam.

Norwegian led the industry by being the first cruise line to install scrubbers with a state-of-the-art water membranes filtration unit in 2016. This sophisticated water cleaning system uses Ultrafiltration technology to clean the recirculated water during the closed loop operation down to clear water.  The by-product is collected and removed in drums.

Norwegian Cruise Line is on track to meet its MARPOL Annex VI compliance goal for reducing its global sulfur cap from 3.5% to 0.5% by 2020.