Ship aerosol emissions and marine fuel regulations: Impacts on physicochemical properties, cloud activity and emission factors

• Marine regulations aim to reduce sulfur and nitrogen exhaust emissions from maritime shipping. Here, two compliance pathways for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, fuel sulfur content reduction and exhaust wet scrubbing, are studied for their eects on physicochemical properties and cloud forming abilities of engine exhaust particles. A test-bed diesel engine was utilized to study fresh exhaust emissions from combustion of non-compliant, high sulfur content fuel with (WS) and without (HiS) the usage of a wet scrubber as well as a regulatory compliant, low sulfur content fuel (LoS). Particle number emissions are decreased by [?] 99% when switching to LoS due to absence of 20-30 nm sulfate particles. While number emissions for WS are also decreased, a shift in the sulfate mode towards larger sizes was found to increase particle mass emission factors by at least 31%. Changes in the mixing state induced by the compliance measures are re ected in the hygroscopicity of the exhaust particles. Fuel sulfur reduction decreased cloud condensation nuclei emissions by at least 97% due to emissions of primarily hydrophobic soot particles. Wet scrubbing increased those emissions, mainly driven by changes in particle size distributions. Our results indicate that both compliance alternatives have no obvious impact on the ice forming abilities of 200 nm exhaust particles. These detailed results are relevant for atmospheric processes and might be useful input parameters for cloud-resolving models to investigate ship aerosol cloud interactions and to quantify the impact of shipping on the radiative budget.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Meteorologi och atmosfärforskning (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

vet (subject category)