Out of sight, out of mind. That simple phrase pretty well sums up how most of us feel about carbon emissions and other pollutants from the world’s fleet of cargo ships and oil tankers. 98% of what they do occurs far out to sea, where no laws apply and the only rule is to maximize profits.

The world’s fleet of commercial vessels relies primarily on something called “bunker oil” — a sludge-like product that is essentially what’s left over after petroleum is reduced to its component parts by refineries. Similar to road tar, it is so thick it has to be heated to make it flow from the storage tanks where it is kept to the enormous diesel engines that power ships.

Since it is the crud left over at the end of the refining process, it contains high concentrations of mercury, arsenic, zinc and other elements that are known to be dangerous to human health. Bunker oil also has high levels of sulfur, the element that is the primary component of acid rain. When it mixes with moisture in the atmosphere, it creates sulfuric acid.

Container ships and oil tankers are critical to the global economy. Most of the stuff on the shelves at Walmart and Amazon fulfillment centers is made overseas and shipped to the developed world in containers carried by enormous ships. The world economy runs on oil, most of which is shipped from where it comes out of the ground to where it is consumed in supertankers. Globalization as we know it would simply not be possible without the ocean-going vessels that shuttle around the globe from port to port.

According to iNewsUK, “It has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars. The emissions from 15 of these mega-ships match those from all the cars in the world. And if the shipping industry were a country, it would be ranked between Germany and Japan as the sixth-largest contributor to global CO2 emissions.”

As it said about the crud equals to oil sludge as we know, even ships use it as one kind of fuel, this should be treat as a kind of hazardous waste. Oil sludge is hard to decompose, yet still have secondary pollution problem need to solve meantime. Only by the technology of Pyrolysis can achieve completely harmless and resourceful disposal of oil sludge, especially Niutech continuous Pyrolysis technology, able to solve this pollution in a environment friendly way.

Niutech Environment Technology Corporation established in 1980s, focus on waste polymer Pyrolysis industry for over 30 years. In this period, Niutech have achieved China National Progress Award in Science & Technology, which is the highest prize in China science and technology area. Niutech now have export its equipment to southern Asia, western Europe, North America and so on, all Pyrolysis plant under safely operation with high environmental and social benefits.

(Part of this article from https://cleantechnica.com)