Alternative fuel for sustainable shipping across the Taiwan Strait

Abstract

We conducted a total fuel life-cycle inventory for atmospheric emissions for two ships operating between Mainland China and Taiwan, comparing the difference that may result from operating on heavy fuel oil (HFO) and on liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuels. In addition, we assess the global warming impact from these two fueling alternatives. We use a commercially available life-cycle assessment (LCA) software to conduct a life-cycle inventory of airborne emissions from the ship fuel use. Our findings indicate possible improvement in total fuel-life-cycle GHG emissions from the use of LNG as alternative fuel to power ships. While total GHG and CO2 emission reduced, however, methane emissions increased significantly when LNG is used as alternative fuel to power both of our case ships. Both ships exhibit great reduction in the emissions of NOx (38-39%) and CO (42-43%). The reduction is much more remarkable in SO2 (99.8%) and PM10 (97.5%). The weight of emissions from operation stage has become relatively smaller in the whole fuel life-cycle total GHG emissions, when the two ships move to operate on LNG. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.