Going Green: Norwegian Adds Emission-Reducing Tech to Ships

Norwegian Cruise Line has announced that a new Exhaust Gas Cleaning system has been added to Norwegian Sun and Norwegian Jade. The new systems are expected to significantly reduce air emissions and, subsequently, the ships' environmental footprints. The decision was made in part with the line’s Sail & Sustain environmental program. Norwegian plans to extend the system to eight of their ships. 

With the installation of the new technology, Norwegian is continuing to follow through with its commitment of using safe and conservative environmental. The ships’ new lightweight in-line scrubbers are a hybrid system developed by Yara Marine Technologies. In each ship, five scrubbers were installed, one per engine, covering the whole propulsion system.  Together, they are capable of reducing the emission of sulfur to air up to 99 percent and also reduce 85 percent particulate emission to the air. Norwegian Jade and Norwegian Sun’s new technology will reduce the equivalent of approximately 3,000 tons of sulfur oxide, SOx, gas in the years to come.

The new system works by “scrubbing away” the sulfur oxide and particulate matter before the emissions leave the stack to decrease the amount that is released into the air.

According to the company, they were the first cruise line to install scrubbers with a state-of-the-art water membranes filtration unit in 2016. This water cleaning system uses Ultrafiltration technology to clean the recirculated water. 

As part of Sail & Sustain, Norwegian’s Safety and Environmental Protection Policy establishes several environmental objectives including reducing the impact of its operations on the environment, disposing garbage and waste materials in properly, recycling and re-using materials and establishing specific objectives and targets for constant improvement.

Norwegian now has eight ships equipped with Gas Scrubbers technology, with Norwegian Jade and Norwegian Sun joining Norwegian Pearl, Norwegian Gem, Norwegian Escape, Norwegian Joy and Pride of America and the line’s newest ship sailing in June 2018, Norwegian Bliss. Norwegian Cruise Line is on track to meet its MARPOL Annex VI compliance goal of reducing its global sulfur cap from 3.5 percent to 0.5 percent by 2020. 

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