Spliethoff was early to choose a scrubber for marine SOx compliance. In 2012, the company retrofitted Alfa Laval PureSOx on the M/S Plyca, setting the record for the largest marine scrubber ever installed. Currently, Spliethoff has twenty vessels with PureSOx scrubbers.
Spliethoff has installed PureSOx systems on two different types of vessels. Six of them, including the M/S Plyca, are ConRo vessels. An additional fourteen are general cargo vessels, referred to by Spliethoff as S-types.
The scrubbers are major installations whose physical impact on the vessels is noticeable. The scrubber makes the funnel much larger, and circulation pumps are more or less integrated into the new funnel.
In some ways, Hoogeveen points out, the scrubbers have made ECA operation simpler. Earlier, there was always fuss with the fuel, where a vessel operator had to open or close valves and then wait a few hours until the system was flushed for the new fuel type. With a scrubber they can just push a button, so in a way the operations actually require less work. This means by using the scrubber an operator does not have to change fuels.