Cleaner & More Cost Effective
To drive the shipping industry towards a greener, more sustainable future by providing innovative, economically viable, and environmentally friendly fuel solutions.
At Curve Energy, we deliver innovative fuel solutions that benefit our clients, the environment, and future generations. By combining breakthrough technology with a deep understanding of industry needs, we are helping to shape a cleaner, more sustainable maritime sector.
OUR MISSION IS CLEAR
THE REGULAtionS
International regulations are putting limits on emissions.
As a response to these issues, environmental regulations in the shipping sector are becoming increasingly stringent.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is a United Nations specialized agency responsible for the safety and security of shipping and the prevention of marine and atmospheric pollution by ships. The IMO has 176 member states and includes 50 different Conventions and Protocols. Its members represent over 98% of the global shipping market.
In an effort to curb SOx emissions, the International Maritime Organization implemented a new regulation that came into effect on January 1, 2020. Known as “IMO 2020,” the new regulation reduced the upper limit of the sulphur content of marine fuels to 0.5% percent m/m (mass by mass) from 3.5%.
With this cap on the sulphur content of marine fuels, prompting the shipping industry to use cleaner fuels and equip their vessels with sulphur reduction systems the IMO, took a milestone step towards a green and just transition of the shipping industry.
THE RESPONSE
The current “best” solution to meeting the mandated 86% reduction in sulphur levels is to dilute high-sulphur heavy fuel oil (HSFO) with expensive low-sulphur fuel oil.
Diluting (aka Hybrid Blending) blends incompatible distillates rather than removing the sulphur. The resulting hybrid product has a concise shelf life and exhibits an irregular burn profile, causing the ship exhaust emission problem of “Black Carbon.”
Unstable Hybrid very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) can cause expensive damage to ship engines.
Alternatively, ships that still use heavy fuel oil (HFO) must install exhaust gas cleaning systems (also known as scrubbers) to comply with the emissions reduction standards.
However, the increasing use of scrubbers brings about a new problem. Scrubbers remove pollutants by spraying seawater over the ship’s exhaust gases. This mixture of seawater and pollutants - called scrubber wash water - is then discharged overboard, where it can damage marine ecosystems. The concentration of scrubber wash water is exceptionally high in ports, driving some countries to ban wash water discharge in their ports.
tHE SOLUTION
Curve’s patented chemical and reactor process creates a safer, high-quality desulphurized heavy fuel oil - VLSFO.
The required infrastructure is a low-capital-cost stand-alone chemical reactor system that is non-invasive and downstream of existing refinery systems. We remove recalcitrant thiophene sulphur compounds from heavy fuel oils at close to ambient temperatures of 45C.
The process takes HFO and yields 90% -95% ultra-low sulphur fuel oil (ULSFO).
The end by-product is a Bitumen Binder (Sequestered Sulphur Thiophene), which can be sold to a bitumen plant and used to produce high-quality bitumen road pavements, creating a zero-waste solution