Second FUMES project to examine maritime methane emissions

At the start of this year the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) published the most comprehensive dataset of real-world methane emissions from LNG-fueled ships to date.

That project was known as FUMES (Fugitive and Unburned Methane Emissions from Ships) and measured emissions from ships converted to liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an effort to reduce their NOx and S02 emissions, but at the expense of pumping methane into the atmosphere.

LNG consists primarily of methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, responsible for about 30% of the heating effect of climate change. It leaks into the atmosphere through the entire lifecycle of fossil LNG, and the leakage is particularly bad from the type of engines used by cruise ships.

What makes this research all the more pressing is that the number of ships using LNG has grown from 400 to over 750 in the last ten years. A further 300 such ships are currently on order.

To improve our knowledge of methane emissions in this area,  ICCT have today launched a follow-up project, FUMES 2, which will run for two years, studying methane emissions from the two-stroke LNG engines currently used in many new large cargo ships. The project will also measure methane emissions from sources other than the engines, such as fuel tanks, vents and gas combustion units. 

These emissions will be measured using both onboard sensors and drones. The drones will fly in such a pattern as to construct a ‘flux wall’ that can identify and measure methane emissions originating from the equipment used to load or unload LNG as well as methane from the ships’ exhaust, as seen below.

The ICCT expect this more accurate measurement of ‘well-to-tank and tank-to-wake emission factors’ to help regulators develop effective policies for the maritime sector and to drive changes across the industry to reduce emissions in future.

Dr. Bryan Comer, Marine Program Director at the ICCT said: ‘With the rapid growth of LNG shipping, understanding the full scope of methane emissions is increasingly important for climate policy. FUMES 2 will generate the most comprehensive dataset yet of real-world methane emissions from using and transporting LNG.’

Partnering with ICCT on the project are: Explicit ApS, the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO),  Queen Mary University of London, and the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping.