Ship Emissions Analyzer
Emission Analyzer INCA enters the sea
INCA Maritime is the youngest member in the INCA series of multicomponent gas analyzers which have been so far preferably used in the Natural Gas and Biogas market – and, at the same time, it is the most powerful one. It has been especially designed to carry out exhaust gas emission monitoring on ships or from ship engines respectively. While using again the proven and cost efficient optoelectronic NDIR spectrometry, the developer of UNION Instruments enhanced the performance of this technology to such an extent, that INCA Maritime even overtops the strict specification IMO (International Maritime Organisation) and the NOx Technical Code respectively. This further development applies preferably to optical system performance, temperature dependency and data acquisition procedures.
INCA Maritime simultaneously determines the concentration values of CO2, SO2, NOx and O2.
Technology Know-how implemented by engineering competence
The historically accumulated know how of UNION Instruments of elementary processes in optoelectronic components has been implemented by engineers with the clear goal of further enhancing measuring precision and operational performance of INCA analyzers. Performance of IR sources, filters, detectors and details of the optical path have been optimized and the physically-caused temperature dependency of the measuring results almost totally eliminated. This was achieved by temperature stabilizing the measuring cells to better than ± 1° K using the new multishell concept. Additionally, measuring data acquisition has been further developed by introducing optimizing functions such as Spline (interpolation) and LockIn (measurement of very small signals) thanks to using high performance processors of the latest generation.
More than maritime emission monitoring
In addition to ship emission monitoring, INCA Maritime is able to solve other applications in the maritime market as well. This includes for instance quality monitoring of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas, used as alternative ship fuel) during fuelling of ships. Not all LNG producing plants worldwide deliver LNG of sufficient quality as required for driving ship engines. INCA Maritime ensures correct fuelling and protects the ship operator from far-reaching consequences such as unplanned long stays in ports by continuously monitoring the Methane Number as quality characteristic of the LNG in question. Another application possibility is to protect ship engines from the danger of explosions by monitoring the lower explosion limit of gas mixtures inside the engine.
User expectations implemented
Precise, highly-available and cost-efficient devices with flexible integration possibilities are typical user expectations on newly developed measuring devices. INCA Maritime meets these requirements quite well:
- Precise by various measures regarding temperature stabilization, optical system and data handling,
- highly-available by means of proven technologies and pre-calibrated analyzer cassettes with easy replacing procedure suitable for semi-skilled personnel,
- flexible by availability as complete system or OEM module and, finally,
- cost efficient with investment costs, which are significantly lower compared to other systems with similar performance data.
| Technical performance data INCA Maritime | |
|---|---|
| Measuring components | CO2, SO2, NOx, O2 |
| Detection technology | CO2, SO2, NOx: Optoelectronics (NDIR) O2: Electrochemical cell |
| Temperature stability of the measuring cell | Better than ± 1 °K at up to 60°C ambient temperature (by multishell-concept) |
| Material of the measuring cell | Stainless steel, polished |
| IR source | Intensity optimized; Operation at 500 - 600 °C |
| Detector | Measuring- and reference channel in one unit |
| Reference method | Division |
| Sample gas conditioning | Third party systems (Swagelock connector) |
| Sample gas switching | Up to 4 stations, automatically switch over |
| Signal processing | Digital along the whole signal route |
| Data interfaces | Profibus, Modbus, 4 - 20 mA; others upon request |
| Delivery forms | Analyzer / Analyzer system / OEM-Modul |
| Maintenance concept | Replacement of analyzer cassette by a pre-calibrated spare cassette using just 4 srews |
| Measurement accuracy | Better than ± 1% of span |
