Carnival Corporation to trial “Greener Cruising”

How can powering massive lumps of metal though water via extremely thirsty gas guzzling diesel engines be green ?  Also imagine how much food and other things are wasted on board a cruise ship.

Well Carnival Corporation say that they have been given the go-ahead by US and Canadian authorities to trial their new “exhaust cleaning technology” (why wouldn’t they ?)

Carnival corporation who include many cruise line’s and ships like Holland America and Princess cruises, have been told they can trial the technology on at least 32 of their ships.

Apparently Carnival has invested US$180 into this research.  Of course Carnival will be hoping that this will pay off in the long term as if this is successful it will mean that the costs of environmental initiatives are greatly reduced in the long term for them.

The technology is listed as “scrubbing sulphur oxide from emission exhausts and also reducing particulate matter and black carbon” and “uses two stage diesel particulate filter is innovatively designed, producing wash water pure enough to meet international standards that the industry has until now struggled to meet.”

It sounds to me like this is an expensive catalytic convertor / diesel particular filter like they use on modern cars, I should imagine they might be a little more complicated though, I can’t see them popping down to Kwik Fit for one.

The first ships to trial the technology will be Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America, Cunard and Princess because of their North American itineraries.

I guess it isn’t going to do anybody any harm if this trial is successful and may help save the planet a little at the same time.