Development of Maritime Black Carbon Sensor

Black Carbon (BC) is a climate and health problematic emission, caused by the combustion of fossil fuels in, e.g., the shipping industry. Efficient monitoring of the emissions is a first step towards reducing this harmful pollution.

This report describes the development and testing of Green Instruments EMS BC sensor technology using the Extinction Minus Scattering (EMS) method to quantify the BC concentration in engine exhaust.

The EMS BC sensor is an online and in-situ measurement technique that has several ad-vantages compared to the traditional extractive techniques as well as filter deposition methods, such as Filter Smoke Number (FSN) or Photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS).

The priorities in the development activities were to ensure that the measurement system has low maintenance, sufficient robustness, appropriate accuracy, and validity, and is relatively easy to install on various exhaust and ship types.

The system has been evaluated on test engine exhaust, followed by sea trial both as in-situ and extractive editions of the EMS BC.

The suitability of the EMS BC sensor for measuring BC from a diesel exhaust is addressed. The focus is on providing correlations i.e., the relative response of the BC concentrations – mainly because no reference method for measuring BC has been agreed upon.

Read the MUDP-report.