Oily funnel emmissions

Hi. My wife and I have recently returned from our third cruise. All have been on the P&O Arcadia in a rear balcony cabin. The first two holidays were great, but the last cruise was spoilt by wet brown oily drops that fell on to the rear of the ship, including the balconies and us!

The whole of the rear of the ship was covered in brown staining - it looked disgusting. And when using the balcony we had oily drops fall on us, causing several items of clothing to be ruined (P&O laundered the clothes but could not remove the stains).

Does anyone know what causes this problem is and how common it is?

I can find lots of information on-line regarding soot problems on cruise ships, but no mention of brown oily deposits. BTW, we did have LOTS of soot as well. This was a nuisance, but the gritty soot could be brushed off and the powdery soot washed off.

Oh dear. What a shame .

We have had the soot problem. After my husbands' trousers were ruined, we sat on their bathrobes.

Sorry that it spoilt your cruise.

common

we once booked an aft on Freedom OTS and it was dirty with soot every day. They cleaned it once a day but reality is big marine diesels buning marine grade oil are NOT the cleanest burning engines in the world

May places ARE cracking down however so you also see some ships having 'scrubbers' installed on their exhausts. (such installation work on FOTS was suspected cause of their recent fire (no injuries and no lost sailing time .... but made the news)

'usually' the wind carries the exhaust away from the ship, but on a low wind day it trails straight aft and the natural eddies that occur behind the moving ship cause some 'suction' pulling this junk down ....

I have seen it happen from time to time.

Sorry it happened.

Keith

Thanks for your replies.

The powdery and gritty black soot was cleaned up by the crew. But the brown oily 'soot' was not cleaned - I was told special chemicals were needed to remove it. So the rear of the Arcadia was in a very sorry state for all three-and-a-half weeks of the cruise.

This was really the crux of my question. As if this brown oily soot is a common occurrence I would have expected to see lots of people grumbling about it on message boards.

Capt_BJ mentions 'scrubbers'. We did find a sizeable piece of oily stained wadding on our balcony which looked like it had been ejected from the funnel. So I'm thinking maybe a filter (or scrubber) had failed resulting in this persistent problem?

Thanks for your replies.

 

The powdery and gritty black soot was cleaned up by the crew. But the brown oily 'soot' was not cleaned - I was told special chemicals were needed to remove it. So the rear of the Arcadia was in a very sorry state for all three-and-a-half weeks of the cruise.

 

This was really the crux of my question. As if this brown oily soot is a common occurrence I would have expected to see lots of people grumbling about it on message boards.

 

Capt_BJ mentions 'scrubbers'. We did find a sizeable piece of oily stained wadding on our balcony which looked like it had been ejected from the funnel. So I'm thinking maybe a filter (or scrubber) had failed resulting in this persistent problem?

What scrubbers are, are units that inject a chemical water mist into the exhaust gas, to entrain particulate and vapor particles (soot, sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides) into the water, which is then either treated to remove the impurities and reused, or pumped overboard. This would not provide the oily wadding you mention. And scrubbers, not being required in Europe, are generally not fitted to ships over there.

In general, I cannot think of a condition when liquid oily residue would be coming from either the engines or the boilers. However, the mention of oily "wadding" (and using my English-American translation) I take that to mean something like a cotton fabric, I suspect that the incinerator is not operating properly, which is used to incinerate solid waste, oily sludges from the engine room, etc., and which may have not completely burned the waste before it went out the stack.

What scrubbers are, are units that inject a chemical water mist into the exhaust gas, to entrain particulate and vapor particles (soot, sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides) into the water, which is then either treated to remove the impurities and reused, or pumped overboard. This would not provide the oily wadding you mention. And scrubbers, not being required in Europe, are generally not fitted to ships over there.

 

In general, I cannot think of a condition when liquid oily residue would be coming from either the engines or the boilers. However, the mention of oily "wadding" (and using my English-American translation) I take that to mean something like a cotton fabric, I suspect that the incinerator is not operating properly, which is used to incinerate solid waste, oily sludges from the engine room, etc., and which may have not completely burned the waste before it went out the stack.

Thanks for putting me straight on 'scrubbers'.

And your incinerator theory makes a lot of sense to me.

Cheers

Just a point of information: last time I was on Arcadia (during the summer) I was told that scrubbers had been fitted to meet the upcoming emission regulations, but they hadn't (at that time) been certified.

VP