Innovatively saving the Planet & the Budget

The Paris agreement has been in effect since 2016, and the shipping industry is scrambling to find ways to comply to the upcoming International Maritime Organization regulation in 2020.

According to a study by the aforementioned IMO, maritime transport emits around 1000 million tonnes of CO2 annually and is responsible for about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Tackling these numbers is of vital importance for our planet, but also a massive head-scratching issue for the industry. Therefore, the maritime industry has opened their harbours to innovative ideas and smart solutions.

PortXL alumni start-ups are providing their contribution with innovative technologies to assist the maritime industry in meeting the requirements of the new legislation. For example:

Green Sea Guard provides and installs equipment to monitor ship emissions and produces advanced analysis of the data. This supports compliance acceptance, fuel evaluation, performance profiling and engine diagnostics. Additionally, emissions monitoring and analysis can support testing of emission reduction effectiveness, and predictive maintenance of ship engines. The data from the shipboard equipment is transmitted to an on-shore server and made available via a secure web portal.Green Sea Guard’s experience is that exhaust monitoring provides a positive business case: every shipowner can save costs from engine diagnosis. Carbon savings from controlling and prioritising maintenance properly start at 23 tonnes per year per engine, and shipowners and managers can start to reduce their carbon footprints on the day of installation. The shipping industry does not have to wait for tighter regulation to save costs and demonstrate green credentials.

Check out Green Sea Guard on their website: https://greenseaguard.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/green-sea-guard-ltd/

Ionada utilizes semi-dry nanotechnology absorbents to offer exhaust gas cleaning as a service for the marine and power generation industry. Their method comes at no extra equipment costs or structural renovations required. Ionada’s team includes international scientists, engineers and technicians that have developed breakthroughs in technologies for emission reductions.

Check out Ionada on their website: https://ionada.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ionada/

Marine Performance Systems (also known by the name Marine Bubble Flow) has solved the scaling issue without requiring alterations to the ship’s structure. The potential efficiency gain is expected to be significantly higher at 10-15% than with current ALS systems offered, particularly for large vessels with flat bottoms, such as container ships, LNGCs, Ro-Ros etc. The technology allows controlling and fine tuning the generation, size and frequency of the air bubbles that provide the air lubrication of the ship’s hull. Tank tests at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, have indicated a drag reduction potential of up to 30%. The resulting reduction in fuel consumption and emissions would be around 10-15%. Some research papers indicate that air lubrication can prevent fouling as the air bubbles change the environment around the hull.

Check out Marine Performance Systems on their website: https://www.marinebubbleflow.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marinebubbles

Njord Power is an innovative ‘One Stop Shop’ for reducing diesel emissions paid for by fuel savings. Njord drastically reduces particle size in your existing fuel between the tank and the engine, which is not possible with current pre-filters. This improves combustion, reducing both consumption and emissions. Njord also offers a software app to optimize fuel consumption in real time. Their mission is to enable companies to reduce fuel consumption and emissions right now.

Check out Njord on their website: http://www.njordfiltration.com/en/

SailRouter™ is a desktop and cloud software which enables insight into real-world ship performances connecting ship behavior on waves to actual engine performance data. The overall goal of the SailRouter™ is to offer automatic solutions for gathering and processing all necessary data during navigation to provide the first tailor made decision support system that could be used in Autonomous ships, as well. Using Sailrouter™ can lead to up to a 10% decrease of CO2 emissions (and by extension fuel consumption), which converts to annual savings of about $200k per ship.

Check out Sailrouter™ on their website: http://sailrouter.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sailrouter/

Whalewashing: best described as a “car wash for ships”, is an innovative way to clean the hull of any type of vessel, ten times faster than other in-water methods and with less risks for the environment. A technology that is a game changer in the maritime maintenance business. Their goal is to build a fully automated machine operating in the water and removing the bio-fouling encrusted on the hull of the medium and large-sized vessels, saving fuel, increasing speed and reducing the carbon footprint.