Norden drive to reduce emissions

Danish tanker and bulker owner D/S Norden AS plans to reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions this year by 2%. A new report by Norden revealed they have installed monitoring systems to all of their ships as part of an environmental initiative to reduce bunkers and minimise CO2 emissions. Last year, the analysis system FLAME from Flame Marine Diagnostic was introduced to all its ships to monitor the combustion of the engine and wear and efficiency.

Earlier this year, Norden introduced a new monitoring system to all of its ships to improve ship efficiency. The analytical tool, Computer Analysis of Ship Performance (CASPER) from Propulsion Dynamics Inc., monitors the ship’s propulsion resistance and indicated speed and oil consumption. The system also shows when to clean the hull of the ship for fouling and when to polish the propeller, as well as estimating the economic benefit of reduced fuel consumption from cleaning.

Data is collected and then compared with the ship’s past performance, taking into account the wind and sea conditions to determine the benefits of cleaning to fuel consumption and speed, and also when cleaning needs to be done. The report said that a Norden ship uses an average of 30 tonnes a day and the efforts made on the ships and investments in frequent cleaning are profitable, both for the environment and the economy.

“The main objective with FLAME, CASPER and the numerous other initiatives in the environmental era is to reduce our consumption of energy and consequently emissions by 2% this year alone. We are focused on being able to measure the effect of each initiative more accurately within 2008, but in many ways we are on new ground. There are also many variables to consider such as changing weather and sea conditions, so the numbers will probably not be measured in multiple decimals from the beginning,” Jens Christensen, General Manager of Norden’s technical department said. “In practice it can be difficult to obtain permission to clean the hulls at the optimal juncture as a number of ports will not allow the cleaning to take place in their port,” Norden superintendent Jesper Kongstad added.