Methane abatement group set to pilot onboard systems on their ships

Pilot studies for several new onboard methane abatement technologies are due to get underway in the next few months on ships controlled by the 14 members of the Methane Abatement in Maritime Innovation Initiative (MAMII).

Steve Price, who is head of partnerships at Lloyd’s Register’s Safetytech Accelerator that is leading MAMII, told TradeWinds that when the group — which was set up in September 2022 — did its initial research it unearthed about 50 usable technologies for onboard methane abatement.

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Price said around half of these have already been used on ships in one form or another. He gave the example of kit to measure SO_x and NO_x, which has also been adapted to assess methane emissions.

He said MAMII is now going to take around half a dozen technologies that are not being formally piloted which its member partners — some of whom are already testing methane measuring kit on their ships — will trial on either their LNG carriers or LNG dual-fuelled vessels over the next three months.

Price said the intention is to share the learnings from these across the group later this year so that the industry can move forward more quickly rather than individual companies and organisations each doing their own work.

The MAMII head assured that there will also be a public element to its work.

He stressed that the initiative is “not just a talking shop”.

“We’ve been relatively quiet but that’s because we actually want to do some work rather than just talk about stuff,” he said.

But between now and June he indicated that MAMII would start releasing new information.

Price said MAMII wants to promote a zero-methane strategy for LNG-fuelled ships.

The group has already mapped out well-to-wake methane emissions.

He said it is important to understand where the leaks are coming from across the supply chain and what kind of technology is currently in use to mitigate these, whether they are small fugitive around pipework, larger ones or those related to combustion on ships.

Price said the aim is to see where the problems are, the technologies in use and the way methane leaks can be managed, reported and verified — all information that MAMII intends to make public.

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He highlighted that there are now several certification bodies that are trying to map methane across the whole supply chain and said these are moving in the direction of continuous monitoring to give more accurate data.

“The main objective of this is to get rid of all the emissions and to do that you need to know where they are, how much they are and to tackle them properly,” he said.

MAMII, which announced seven new shipowner names that had joined its initiative this week, plans to share its first insights before the end of June.

Price said MAMII is trying to provide the knowledge that will ultimately provide the information for certification or other bodies to draw up guidelines on methane abatement.