The Danish Maritime Authority (DMA) and The Ocean Exchange are leading the way to assuring ocean vessels are in compliance with environmental standards.  Recently, The United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) changed regulations of the acceptable sulfur emissions from large sea vessels.  The Danish Maritime Authority’s website explains that, “Most ships use heavy fuel oil as fuel. Fuel oil has a relatively high sulfur content compared to other types of fuel, and the sulfur is emitted with the ship’s exhaust gas in the form of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which is harmful to living organisms and can contribute to acid rain. Therefore, it is important to observe the permitted sulfur content limits.”  The UN IMO has declared that all ships need to keep sulfur emissions to .5%.  So the DMA has budgeted $1.27million to the monitoring of these emissions, $100,000 of which has gone to a company called Explicit to monitor sulfur emissions in Danish waters.

Based out of Virum, DK, a suburb of Copenhagen, Explicit describes themselves as “an experienced technology company specializing in affordable systems for sensor data acquisition, monitoring and administration.”  They realized that many of the tools used for monitoring environmental hazards are either unable to access areas like the ocean, or can only monitor in fixed positions (like a factory building).  To be able to assess the sulfur emissions of sea vessels there needs to be a way to do the tests over moving vessels.  So they developed a drone that can gather data directly from the source of the emissions, a ship’s smoke stack.

They fly a drone, called a sniffer, right into the smoke stack of a cruising ship.  The drone “sniffs” out how much sulfur is being pushed out into the air in the ship’s exhaust.  The data is then sent in real time to operators from the DMA to insure the ship is in compliance with sulfur emissions.  The key to this is that the drone is able to collect data from a ship while it’s moving rather than in port.  This gives authorities the most accurate picture of the data.

Explicit said they are “focused on data collection in settings that are difficult to access or require a large distributed network of measuring points. Our goal is to provide cost-efficient alternatives to traditional expensive large-scale sensor technology.  Our systems apply smart UAV and mobile hardware coupled with low-cost sensor technologies and advanced analysis software to create unique environmental knowledge through smart data collection.”  And their model seems to be working. 

After more than 245 hours of flight the sniffer drone tested more than 900 ships.  The DMA gave suggestions to shipping companies to “use fuel with a low sulfur content or alternative fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), batteries and others. Another option is to clean the smoke containing sulfur by means of a so-called scrubber (smoke gas cleaning system) so that the sulfur is not emitted along with the exhaust gas.”  When the data on the 900 tested ships came in it showed that 92% of ships in Danish harbors were now within compliance of sulfur emissions.

Explicit CEO Jon Knudsen said, “To have global innovation networks like Ocean Exchange recognize the potential in drones for environmental purposes is a huge motivation.  In the case of sulfur enforcement, drones are one of the few technologies available to ensure that regulations can be properly implemented and pollution levels reduced.”