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Earth Technology

Thousands of Ships Fitted With 'Cheat Devices' To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea (independent.co.uk) 150

Posted by BeauHD from the environmentally-unfriendly dept.
Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler aren't the only companies using "cheat devices" to get around environmental legislation. According to The Independent, "global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with 'cheat devices' that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air." From the report: More than $12 billion has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil. This means the vessels meet standards demanded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that kick in on January 1st. However, the sulphur emitted by the ships is simply re-routed from the exhaust and expelled into the water around the ships, which not only greatly increases the volume of pollutants being pumped into the sea, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions.

A total of 3,756 ships, both in operation and under order, have already had scrubbers installed according to DNV GL, the world's largest ship classification company. Only 23 of these vessels have had closed-loop scrubbers installed, a version of the device that does not discharge into the sea and stores the extracted sulphur in tanks before discharging it at a safe disposal facility in a port. The Exhaust Gas Cleaning System Association has estimated that 4,000 ships will be operating with scrubbers by the time the legislation is enforced, up from fewer than a hundred in 2013. For every ton of fuel burned, ships using open-loop scrubbers emit approximately 45 tons of warm, acidic, contaminated washwater containing carcinogens including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organization that provides scientific analysis to environmental regulators.
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Thousands of Ships Fitted With 'Cheat Devices' To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea More

Thousands of Ships Fitted With 'Cheat Devices' To Divert Poisonous Pollution Into Sea

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  • Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:27PM (#59254964) Journal

    and confiscate the ships that do this.

    • Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @12:04AM (#59255382)

      Given that what they are doing is perfectly legal, good luck with that.

      • Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @03:45AM (#59255762)

        Given that what they are doing is perfectly legal, good luck with that.

        Back in the early 2000s the EU and US (IIRC) simply forbade any single hulled tankers in their waters. If the same happens with these devices, this practice will end and it will end quickly. It's pretty easy to force these assholes to behave if people have the will to kick these shipping companies in the nuts a few times.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          Thank you for highlighting a simple and legal manner by which this can be discouraged.

          Of course, people must also be willing to pay more for their foreign produced goods. But that's the cost of environmentalism.

    • Re:Inspect them (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @12:29AM (#59255438)

      I was curious. "Are they actually breaking any regulations here?" I was a bit suspicious, as it seemed odd for companies to spend billions on non-compliant refits. And hey, as it turns out:

      Under IMO regulations, ships are permitted to use open-loop scrubbers as what they call “equivalents”. These are defined as: “Any fitting, material, appliance or apparatus to be fitted in a ship or other procedures, alternative fuel oils, or compliance methods used as an alternative to that required.”

      Yay for yet another click-bait title. By "cheat devices", the author means "a 100% legal device to comply with current environmental regulations, but in a way you personally don't approve of." So, really, nothing like the BMW emissions scandal.

      The argument of whether or not this should be allowed is another matter entirely, but let's at least be clear on the actual facts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Exactly; I came here to write that. What they're doing is perfectly legal.

        Now, it's also risky. With the new sulphur standards on fuels (which basically require that either bunker fuel be basically the same stuff as diesel, or that ships capture the sulphur from traditional bunker fuel), owners have to make a choice between three options:

        * Pay more for fuel
        * Install expensive closed-loop scrubbers
        * Install cheap open-loop scrubbers

        The problem is they're considering banning the third

        • you may end up having to retrofit to a closed-loop scrubber, which is more expensive than just having installed a closed-loop scrubber to begin with. It's not an easy choice for owners.

          It takes money to make money and if you buy cheap you buy twice.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by zmooc ( 33175 )

        (...) but in a way you personally don't approve of (...)

        Dumping toxic thrash is much more than that. It is not an opinion, it is objectively morally wrong. It may be legal because the law is crap but a slightly ethical company would never do this.

        What we need are names. I don't like to buy things from people that shit in my backyard or from people that hire people that shit in my backyard.

        • Then the easy button, to start with, is not buying a single chinese made item. They arent the only offenders, but you can bet that nearly none of their product is environmentally friendly during production and/or shipping. Being morally conscious costs money. Aside from stealing patented IP and ripping off everyone else, they do not comply with environmental concerns. There is a reason their shit is 10x cheaper. Quality of production ans materials, cost of research and IP, and cost of production. You dont

        • it is objectively morally wrong.

          Okay, I'll bite. Explain the morality in question, and the "objective" part, if you please?

          I mean, this sounds too much like, well, religion. And we all know that religion is both evil and irrelevant....

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Dumping toxic thrash is much more than that. It is not an opinion, it is objectively morally wrong.

          No such thing. It's either objective or it's moral, since all morality is subjective.

          It's perfectly rational to believe that it doesn't matter in the long run what we do to this planet, because the universe doesn't care, and because it's also rational to believe that free will is illusory.

          My morality agrees with yours in this case, but I'm not going to pretend that it's anything other than subjective, because I've had enough self-delusion for several lifetimes already.

          Ultimately, might makes right, but ther

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        Sounds reasonable.
        Given that oceans have hundreds of time the mass of the atmosphere, it is plausible that diverting the sulphur there is a huge improvement, well worth the billions spent. Toxicity is always in the dose.

      • They ARE, actually. For instance, in Alaska, it's against clean water regulations to do this sort of dumping in port. I'm pretty sure it's also illegal in British Columbia. https://www.cruiselawnews.com/... [cruiselawnews.com]

        So no, it's not illegal on an international level, but it is also recognized that this is not harmless waste water. This needs to be reined in.

        • Hilarious that BC has laws like that, when for decades they've been dumping their raw sewage straight into Puget Sound. I guess it's easier to pass regulations that others have to comply with. But I digress (sorry, grumpy WA resident here).

          I think, as with many things, it's context that matters. When ships are near or in port, the waste is concentrated, and those are more environmentally sensitive areas to begin with. Out in the middle of the ocean, there's a lot more room for the waste sulfur to disper

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        "cheating" in games is something that nothing in the game actually prevents you from doing, but it breaks the spirit of the game.

        Likewise, "cheating" in a marriage is not physically assaulting your partner or ripping the marriage contract to shreds. But it violates the spirit of the union.

        So yes, "cheat device" is absolutely the proper term when you install something that satisfies the letters of the regulation while blatantly violating its intention.

    • and confiscate the ships that do this.

      Wouldn't his be easy enough for CBP to check for in US ports? They are on each ship anyway.

  • Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:27PM (#59254968) Journal

    The tragedy of the commons is seemingly, timeless, observational genius.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      In this case, it kind of doesn't matter.

      My college roommate was an environmental engineer. A cliche of the field is "the solution to pollution is dilution". Pollution is mostly stuff that exists around us anyway, that is only bad because it's concentrated by some industrial process. Spread it back out, and it's fine.

      It's been the case as long as ships have had engines that they've polluted quite badly. Except ... it doesn't matter at at sea (near a port is a different issue, and a real concern in some c

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Spread it back out, and it's fine.

        ... which is very much what doesn't happen when you near port. Or are in bays / fjörds / etc. Or are in busy coastal shipping lanes.

        Coastlines which BTW happen to have vastly higher rates of primary oceanic productivity than the vast open areas of deepwater far from land. It's at coastlines that you get the upwellings and richer discharges that bring minerals to the surface that phototrophic organisms need.

        The mass of the oceans as a whole is incredibly large. The

  • How does adding sulfur to sea water increase CO2? (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:34PM (#59254984)

    One thing the article (and summary( states as fact without support, is that adding sulfur to sea water increases CO2 emissions.

    Huh? How would that be true?

    Yes it makes the ocean more polluted but isn't the air what we are more freaked out about now, so in there we should be willing to burn the oceans to save the whole planet?

    On a side note, this is exactly why I am so against the CO2 panic - in order to avoid a perfectly harmless gas going into the atmosphere, we literally have built systems so that thousands of ships can pollute the oceans instead. :-(

    • Some actual info (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:46PM (#59255002)

      Not sure why this was not linked to, but here is what seems to be a pretty good paper [ingentaconnect.com] on how sulfur is converted to CO2 - basically what is really happening is the sulfur is converted to sufur dioxide, which means the seawater gives up some carbon dioxide to maintain balance...

      One interesting thing the paper says though, is that it's still a better idea to dump sulfur into the ocean in the end:

      The oceans, as the atmosphere, are very dynamic, so there are similarities with the release of sulfur into either of these two systems. The oceans, however, are powerful buffers, and by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, they are more able to accommodate the SO2 addition. The dominant biota in the oceans, the plankton, are much more dynamic than their terrestrial counterparts, higher plants (the former having generation times measured in days to weeks, as opposed to years), so the oceans capability for repair of short-term, localised effects is consid- erably greater than their terrestrial counterparts.

      • Not sure why this was not linked to, but here is what seems to be a pretty good paper on how sulfur is converted to CO2...

        So... not much of a chem whiz, huh.

        • Most of us only know one whiz, and he only makes cheez [wikipedia.org].

        • So... not much of a chem whiz, huh.

          That depends on what area of chemistry you are talking about...

          I've never really dealt with sulfur and water, more on the fire end of things. So I wasn't too familiar with the whole SO2/CO2 relationship in the ocean, no... were you really? Could you honestly have answered my question before I posted that paper? Color me dubious, snarky poster.

          I at least know enough to understand the paper I posted, since all you posted was snark and nothing related to it, I guess we'll

  • We had a solution ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @10:00PM (#59255030)

    ... once [wikipedia.org].

    • To those that say a nuclear powered cargo vessel would cost too much I will point out a part of the linked Wikipedia article.

      The Maritime Administration placed her out of service in 1971 to save costs, a decision that made sense when fuel oil cost US$20 per ton. In 1974, however, when fuel oil cost $80 per ton, Savannah's operating costs would have been no greater than a conventional cargo ship.

      The Savannah would have been economical to run even though it was a small ship built as a compromise between a cargo ship and cruise ship. I guess the draw was supposed to be that people could ride along in luxury on cargo runs to have bragging rights to have sailed on a nuclear powered ship. I also guess this didn't materialize and the novelty would have worn off quickly even if it

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )
        You're making the erroneous assumption that environmentalists actually want a solution. They don't. They want the panic. If they wanted a solution we'd be building a whole lot of nuclear, but many of the environmentalists are against that, even though it's the safest form of energy ever found, and least polluting. I'll start to believe it's time to panic when they start holding environmental conferences by telepresence and lobbying for more nuclear power. While they still fly more miles annually for enviro

    • Savannah's cargo space was limited to 8,500 tons of freight in 652,000 cubic feet (18,500 m3). Many of her competitors could accommodate several times as much. Her streamlined hull made loading the forward holds laborious, which became a significant disadvantage as ports became more and more automated. Her crew was a third larger than comparable oil-fired ships and received special training in addition to that required for conventional maritime licenses.

      So the efficiency was due to a slender hull that comp

  • THE SOLUTION (Score:3, Funny)

    by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @10:01PM (#59255038) Homepage
    The solution to this is simple. More capitalism. Probably we should let some rich people buy the oceans and charge tolls to use them, then pray that they use those profits to keep the oceans clean out of selfishness.

    • The solution to this is simple. More capitalism. Probably we should let some rich people buy the oceans and charge tolls to use them, then pray that they use those profits to keep the oceans clean out of selfishness.

      BREAKING NEWS :

      This has already happened.

  • We're all waiting for that girl to show up in the harbor, growling at them container vessels!

    • We're all waiting for that girl to show up in the harbor, growling at them container vessels!

      Yes, and anyone else who cares.

  • Globalization is a scam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @10:38PM (#59255176)
    We'll just add this to the list of ways that globalization is a scam that has been absolutely terrible for the environment as well as the middle class.

  • I was right all along - told you so (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @11:19PM (#59255280)
    You're kidding me. People would actually do that? Has my belief that the human race is shit been validated?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Has my belief that the human race is shit been validated?

      You still needed validation for that? People that are not shit are the exception, not the rule. Usually the shit people do not get an opportunity to act with this much effect on their mind-set, but look, for example, at all the non-experts that attack climate science with no other real justification than that they do not like the results. And that one may end up killing the human race. (Not that the madmen that have created and are maintaining the capability for nuclear sterilization of this planet are any

  • Extremists in my area are trying to stop the provision of natural gas to replace bunker fuel for cargo ships. Never mind the local native americans, who most certainly would be amenable to the facilities if they were running them, or at least had a big enough "piece of the action".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossz ( 67331 )

      Environmental extremist want a "perfect solution" and they want it right now. An major improvement is simply not good enough. Because of their interference, there is no improvement. Environmental extremists are the environment's worse enemy.

      • Environmental extremist want a "perfect solution" and they want it right now.

        It's interesting that extremists on an issue often converge to wanting exactly the same thing. Look for example at the comments you get here about how a soltution for something is pointless because it doesn't fix EVERYTHING.

  • The problem is with international regulation. Just like aircraft fuel is almost entirely untaxed (despite high taxes on auto fuel), no country wants to be the first to impose really strict regulations on transport ships, or to tax the fuel equivalently.

    Ships should be subject to regulations equivalent to diesel trucks. Trucks also have scrubbers, and they don't just dump the contents on the ground. Their fuel should also be taxed equivalently - call it a CO2 fee, or whatever your like, but it ought to be th

    • Sure, trucks have DPF. It traps soot and then burns it off. If you pootle around town and never hit the freeway, it never gets hot enough to burn itself off, so fuel is injected into it in order to cause a regen burn. For vehicles which only operate in town, this can cost as much as 5% of your mileage. Diesel soot is big and chunky, so cilia can remove it from your lungs. Gassers produce just as much soot as diesels, but nearly all of it is very fine (PM2.5) which is smaller than the diameter of cilia, maki

    • Shipping will get more expensive, and that's fine.

      Says you. In any nation where there is the opportunity for people to vote I believe the chances of a CO2 tax to survive an election is near zero.

      Here's an idea, how about instead of forcing our economy into the shitter with crushing taxes we solve the problem?

      How about we find a means to produce sulfur free fuels that are cheaper than the high sulfur fuels we use now? How about we investigate again the possibility of nuclear powered cargo ships? How about we do something that won't just get voted out two

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )

        Says you. In any nation where there is the opportunity for people to vote I believe the chances of a CO2 tax to survive an election is near zero.

        Check back in with Canada in a couple of weeks. That is precisely the election issue being decided right now, with 3 of the 4 major parties committed to maintaining and increasing the existing CO2 tax, and only one planning to scrap it. Current polls show that it could still go either way.

  • Is Dilution

    Me: Sir the discharge storage tank is measuring 38 curies. Our limit prohibits discharging more than 20 curies into the ocean.

    Officer: then we discharge half the tank, top it back off with fresh feed water, and discharge again next week when we are miles away.

  • If there is a fine they will just continue. Things will change only if everybody involved goes to prison.

  • When some faceless, unaccountable government bureaucracy creates a standard that can't possibly be met because the goal was actually to destroy the industry rather than protect the environment, don't be surprised that human resourcefulness will find a way around it.

  • The EPA studied this and put out a report (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:30AM (#59257186)
    You may want to read their informative report [epa.gov] (2011, Obama-era EPA if you're worried) in lieu of "experts" cherry-picked to give a particular opinion to make a newspaper article sound more alarming and thus generate more click revenue. In particular, it has this to say about sulfate emissions (SO2 in the exhaust is ionized into sulfite and bisulfite when dissolved in water, which is then oxidized into sulfate in seawater):

    Sulfate is an abundant and conservative component of seawater; therefore, the discharge of this parameter does not represent a limiting factor for seawater scrubbing. Studies and field testing confirm that the sulfate increase from exhaust gas scrubbing would be insignificant when compared with the quantity already in the oceans

    In fact, the biggest sulfate-related environmental concern is actually a decease in dissolved oxygen in the water due to the reaction. You're basically taking a substance which is problematic in the air (SO2 in the air turns into acid rain, which kills trees and screws up the pH in ecosystems with limited amounts of water), and converting it into a material that's already found in the oceans in abundance (sulfate). This actually sounds like a pretty clever solution to bypass the disruptive stage (SO2 in the air) entirely and send the sulfur straight to where it's going to eventually end up anyway.

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