Langh brings scrubber to market through JV with Deltamarin

Laura Langh-Lagerlöf

JUNE 2, 2014 — Back in October last year, we quoted Laura Langh-Lagerlöf (left), commercial manager of Finland’s Langh Ship, as saying the family-owned shipping company has “really hit the nail on the head” with an exhaust gas scrubber of its own design.

Although the sulfur limit for ship fuel in the North Sea and Baltic Sea is now 1%, Langh Ship’s m/s Laura sails in the area with whatever fuel the charterer has found in Rotterdam, no matter how high its sulfur content — thanks to a closed loop scrubber that emits exhaust gas that is even cleaner than if the fuel had a sulfur content of no more than 0.1%.

Now Langh Ship has formed a joint venture with Deltamarin Ltd and Oy Langh Ship Ab —  DeltaLangh Ltd — to bring the Langh scrubber to a wider market.

“The scrubber has been such a success that we are sure it will benefit other ship owners as well,” says Ms. Langh-Lagerlöf,

Based on excellent experiences collected so far with m/s Laura, Langh Ship has decided to equip its four other vessels with similar systems to be supplied by DeltaLangh.

The current SECA limit of 1% sulfur in fuel will drop to 0.1% starting from January 1, 2015.
 
Langh Ship’s five vessels all trade in the SECA area and so the company had to react to the new regulations. After reviewing the alternative scrubbers available at that time, Langh Ship’s Managing Director Hans Langh decided to reach for even better performance and cost efficiency. Based on the 40 year long experience of water treatment systems that Mr. Langh had from another family company, Industrial and Ship Cleaning Services Hans Langh, he set up a large product development project aiming to engineer a reliable closed loop scrubber. The result is a fully functional scrubber with a water treatment unit that cleans the scrubber’s washing water very efficiently. Performance of the water treatment is also unique as the water content of residual sludge is minimal.

The first full scale scrubber installation has now been in operation for one year onboard M/S Laura, a 6,500 DWT general cargo vessel equipped with a 6 MW main engine. Without interruptions or down times, the system has been in operation and fully functional year round, even through Baltic winter and ice conditions

“The scrubber has proved to be very easy to operate, stable and does not add much extra workload for the crew”, says Langh Ship’s Senior Technical Adviser Reino Verosaari, who has been closely involved in the project. The equipment is classified by DNV GL.

Deltamarin has over 20 years’ experience in ship design and in project management. As the the need for major retrofits to meet the rules has become evident, Deltamarin has decided to expand into hardware deliveries.

“When we heard about the new innovative solution that Langh Ship had come up with, we knew that this was the product Deltamarin wants to be involved in,” says Deltamarin Managing Director Mika Laurilehto.

Deltamarin is a subsidiary of AVIC International Maritime Holdings Limited.