A Cal State Long Beach team of faculty and students from the engineering department will begin testing a new exhaust cleaning system for commercial ships today.
Hamid Rahai, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and chair Hamid Hefazi, along with graduate and Ph.D. students, will monitor a seawater scrubber system over the next three years.
“Our team will be testing, evaluating and assessing its performance and make recommendations for improvements and application,” Hefazi said.
The seawater scrubber aims to reduce emissions of commercial ships by as much as 85 percent by 2013.
The faculty and students will be working with the Port of Los Angeles, Horizon Shipping Lines and Rolls Royce Marine, a world leader in ship technology design and manufacturing. Horizon Shipping Lines has provided Horizon Hawk, a commercial ship, for the team to travel on from Los Angeles to Oakland.
During this 12-hour trip, the team will test emissions at various conditions.
“The main goal for our project is to improve our local air quality,” Rahai said. “The driving force behind this project is that we provide technology that meets the California Air Resources Board requirements. That way, we can actually reduce the pollution in the area and at the same time develop a technology.”
The scrubber system works much like how rainwater cleanses dust particles in the air.
The seawater is used to create a vapor that produces rain droplets in the exhaust, which collects all the heavy particles. When exposed to a high temperature, these particles, including harmful sulfur, bond with each other and create new materials that form a sludge, which is disposed of later.
The seawater undergoes a refining process, and once it is used, it is discharged from the ship.
“One of the major things we’re going to do is sample the discharge water to make sure it meets the International Maritime Organization requirements,” Rahai said. “Actually, there’s not that much baseline data available, so this will be a significant step to provide the baseline data in terms of what kind of discharge water we have and how it’s going to impact the ecosystem.”
This will be the second type of technology that the Port of Los Angeles is testing. The port is testing a variety of technologies to determine which is best suited to reach the goal of reducing air pollution. Since seawater is plentiful in the ocean, Rahai is confident in the success of CSULB’s scrubber system.
California regulations require that ships within 24 nautical miles of land must use a costly high-grade fuel. This fuel is cleaner and more refined than the cheaper, dirtier diesel fuels most ships use. The scrubber system has the potential to save millions of dollars in fuel by allowing ships to use the lower grade fuel at all times, while still meeting emission requirements.
Rahai said the next step is to determine how successful the scrubber system is, and to determine what kind of policies will be implemented to require shippers to adapt the technology.
It can be adapted to existing ships or new ships.
“If they are required to adapt this technology, and it is a reasonable price, then obviously this is going to have a major impact on air quality in our region and overall in California,” Rahai said.
He continued to say that California is a trendsetter among the states, and other states adapt to what California is doing. Shipping is a worldwide method of commerce, so air quality could potentially improve worldwide if this technology is successful.
The ship CSULB is testing not only travels from LA to Oakland, but also to Guam and Shanghai.
“This is a good project,” Hefazi said. “Our mission at CSULB is not only to educate students, but to help the community. The port neighborhood is polluted, and our goal is to reduce the air pollution the port contributes.”
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