Emissions monitoring on Ships and an insight into the Maritime Directive

Shipping continues to grow for the purposes of trade and transportation. This growth is often close to densely populated shores, for example the port of Antwerp in Belgium, Hamburg in Germany and the Bosphorus in Turkey. Air emissions from the marine industry therefore are becoming more important and are increasingly subject to strict targets for reduction of oxides of sulphur (SOx) and nitrogen (NOx) through the international MARPOL regulations.

Compliance to the latest phases of these tightening regulations requires state-of-the art emissions measurement, monitoring and mitigation technologies. This paper gives an insight into the tightening legislation in the marine industry and the emission reduction technologies, gas analysis instrumentation and techniques which are becoming common for monitoring of shipping emissions.

Key areas to support this legislative requirement are the supply of specialty gases calibration mixtures to the facilities where emissions testing of heavy marine engines is carried out and also the supply of calibration gas mixtures to the shipping industry for on-board testing of their gas analysis instrumentation to ensure compliance with emissions regulations. This requires accurate calibration of the test instrumentation which detects and monitors emissions and since the industry is global, there is a high emphasis on the use of international standards.