With the maritime sector under ever greater regulatory pressure to reduce emissions, Germany’s Fuelsave has unveiled FS MARINE+, which it describes as a potential game changer in shipping
Founded in 2015 by CEO Marc Sima, COO Jan P Brugger and CTO Heino Eckerich “to deliver innovative efficiency enhancement solutions” to help various industries reduce both their operating expenses (OPEX) and emissions, Germany’s Fuelsave has now launched FS MARINE+, a ‘green technology’ that enables the shipping industry to cut emissions while simultaneously reducing fuel consumption.
Through the dynamic and load-based injection of hydrogen, oxygen, methanol and water in three different parts of the air intake of a ship’s engine, the system, Sima explains, “directly influences the stocheometric mix” and results in the cleaner and more thorough combustion of fuel, substituting a dirty primary fuel for a clean-burning alcohol distillate. “FS MARINE+ is an efficiency-enhancement and emission-reduction solution that achieves real net cost savings to deliver increased profitability to customers while reducing emissions and air pollution for a unique win-win. With FS MARINE+, saving the environment finally pays off,” he says.
Taking this further, the company calculates that the system, which can be typically retrofitted on board a ship in a matter of three to five days, can potentially help customers reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by around 8-15%; sulphur oxides by 10-20%; nitrogen oxides by 30-80%; particulate matter by 40%; and black carbon by 33% percent. Moreover, Fuelsave contractually guarantees customers that the system will result in net OPEX savings of 10%. At the same time, customers can also expect a return on investment (ROI) of one to three years, with Sima reporting that FS MARINE+ is “the only emission-reduction solution with such a positive ROI, according to Carbon War Room”.
Furthermore, FS MARINE+ “is more futureproof than any scrubber or [selective catalytic reduction (SCR)] since the solution does not treat a symptom but tackles the root of the problem: the dirty, inefficient combustion of dirty fossil fuels”. What’s more, in the future, he reasons, “when people have clean fuels, no one will need a scrubber anymore, but everyone will need to save even more money” as cleaner fuels will also be more expensive fuels.
In addition to laboratory testing by FVTR in Rostock, FS MARINE+ has been shown using official DNV GL/IMO efficiency appraisal tools to outperform other IMO-analysed systems in terms of both efficiency enhancement and ROI. Furthermore, the system, which represents the first such technology to be approved by DNV GL and which has now been patented in 40 countries, has also been field tested for a period of two-and-a-half years aboard the MV Annette, one of the largest heavy-lift crane ships in Europe, where it “achieved over 20% net OPEX savings”.
Indeed, Fuelsave, which receives funding from the EU and which was named Top SME in Europe as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 (H2020) initiative, has now signed a contract worth more than $5m with SAL, the owner of the Annette, to install FS MARINE+ systems on six other ships. What’s more, having received letters of intent (LOIs) from a range of shipping lines for more than another 200 ships, the company reports that it has identified a potential sales pipeline exceeding $4.5bn.
“[FS MARINE+] is easy to retrofit, it pays itself through the achieved savings [and] it is a unique combination of efficiency enhancement/cost savings and emission reduction,” Sima says. “We are way more futureproof than a scrubber or SCR. We can adjust in the future to any new type of fuel that might today pose unknown consequences.”
Having been selected to participate in some of the “leading accelerators in the world”, including ZEBOX and Techstars, Fuelsave is currently taking part in the 2020 PortXL Rotterdam programme. More information on FS MARINE+ as well as the company’s other technologies, can be found on the Fuelsave website here: https://fuelsave-global.com
