Monitoring of flue gas pollutants of ships by drones

Research Project, 2020 – 2021

Purpose and goal: The aim is to minimize the negative impact of shipping on air quality and human health. A new international environmental regulation has been created but it is important that unscrupulous actors are exposed in order for this to be useful. The goal of the project is therefore to develop drone-based measurement technology that can reliably and efficiently check that ships in real operation use clean fuel or the required abatement technology. The reason for using drones is that it is a safer way to control ships in operation than with aircraft, which is used today Expected results and effects: Emission measurement of ships in operation will be demonstrated with drone measurement. This method can replace aircraft measurement to some extent and this would provide safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly measurement. A complete ship surveillance solution will includes other techniques used today. The prerequisite is that you understand the behavior of the sensors and measurement errors. Lessons from this project will provide input data to other environmental applications, e.g. related to industries and volcanoes. Approach and implementation: In this project, we will modify instrument drone concepts and test these in three measurement campaigns (17 flight days). Comparative measurements will in part be carried out clsoe to Chalmers´ fixed measuring stations (Älvsborg fästning and a mobile measuring station) . Three measuring concepts will be developed and tested: (1) electro chemical system that measures SO2, NO, NO2, O3, CO2 and PM2.5, (2) bag sampling system that sucks in exhaust gas for later analysis and (3) an optical sensor which measures SO2 and NO2 by analyzing sky light that is reflcted from the water surface.