Clean Marine set to cut scrubber costs

Clean Marine says that its newly developed “naked scrubber” reduces total installed weight of infrastructure by more than two thirds

Oslo, Norway, headquartered exhaust gas cleaning system specialist Clean Marine is launching a next generation SOx scrubber that promises big reductions in shipowners’ investment and installation costs as well as lower scrubber operating expenditure.

Clean Marine says that its newly developed “naked scrubber” reduces total installed weight of infrastructure by more than two thirds, which means significant capex savings on the scrubber itself and no need to strengthen the ship structure prior to installation.

The simplified scrubber also reduces installation time from 4-5 weeks to three weeks, cutting docking costs significantly. A pre-fabricated electric room is one of the solutions that enable significantly shorter installation time.

All critical components on the open-deck scrubber are protected from harsh sea conditions.

“In total, our new scrubber application is significantly more competitive than other scrubber applications on the market and compared to the alternative of using low-sulfur fuels to meet the IMO2020 standards.” says Nils Høy-Petersen, CEO of Clean Marine. “This development is in response to many shipowners that have requested both lower capex and opex levels for marine scrubbers while being able to satisfy the IMO 2020 emission level requirements,

The compact “naked” scrubber is a hybrid scrubber that can run with both open and closed loop, thereby avoiding conflicts with ports that have prohibited the use of open loop scrubbers. It can easily be inspected and maintained by the vessel crew in order to maximise operational uptime.

The scrubber is made of high-grade stainless-steel material and is easily incorporated with the ship’s boilers. It comes with a proven zero back pressure construction that has already had more than 10,000 hours of operation with boilers the past few years. Favorable placement of electronics and simplified cable connections make it easy to install and maintain. Which is often a time-consuming process during the installation.

“The big shipowners with a clear sustainability profile and plan seem largely unaffected by recent industry discussions” says Høy-Petersen. “However, we believe this next-generation scrubber application could make it easier for other smaller shipowning companies to opt for a scrubber solution.”

Clean Marine’s expects 2019 its revenues to be 6-7 times higher than in 2018.

“It is fair to say that the scrubber market has slowed down in recent months, but we have invested in production capacity worldwide that allows us to handle large orders and shorten delivery times,” says Høy-Petersen. “Our current order backlog requires us to deliver 8-10 exhaust gas systems per month in the run-up to IMO 2020. Instead of operating the vessels in the turmoil of January 2020, it could be beneficial to install a scrubber during that difficult time. We still have available production slots for shipowners that require scrubbers for delivery early 2020,”