Organic pollutant removal from marine diesel engine off-gases under electron beam and hybrid electron beam and wet scrubbing process

Abstract The removal of organic pollutants from ship emission was studied using two processes namely electron beam (EB) and hybrid EB with wet scrubbing process. A mobile accelerator unit was used to treat 4915 Nm3/h of flue gas emitted from a tugboat in Riga Shipyard. A volume of 3 m3 seawater containing 36.8 mM of NaClO2 oxidant was used as a wet scrubber solution. Organic pollutants, mainly volatile organic pollutants (VOCs), were collected at three different sampling points, before and after irradiation vessels, and after wet-scrubber unit, respectively. They were collected with glass sampling bottles, tedlar bags, Coconut Shell Charcoal (CSC) sorbents and XAD-2 sorbents. CH3OH and CH3OH/CH2Cl2 (1:1) were used to extract VOCs from CSC and XAD-2 sorbents, respectively. Syringe filters were used to obtain the solid-free extraction solutions. They were concentrated using a micro-extractor under continuously blowing high-purity Ar. A gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used for analysis. The identified organic compounds were: aliphatic hydrocarbons (dodecane C12H26 to eicosane C20H42), aromatic hydrocarbon (toluene), esters (C3H7COOCH3, (C4H9OCO)2C6H4), nitro compounds (C3H5NO3, C4H7NO2) and acid (C7H15COOH). After 4.2 kGy EB irradiation, around 50–100% aliphatic hydrocarbons, 83% toluene and 7.5% (C4H9OCO)2C6H4 were removed from the off-gases, and after EB hybrid wet-scrubber process, most organic compounds including nitro compounds were removed. Only trace amount of toluene, hexadecane, octadecane and dibutyl phthalate were found to be present in the gas phase.