A project valued at £3.6 million has been launched in an attempt to improve environmental standards within the marine industry. AVID Technology will lead the operation which was launched by Energy Technologies Institute. The project focuses on developing and demonstrating a waste heat recovery system. This new system could deliver reduced emissions and improve fuel efficiency savings. These savings are expected to be about 8% across all types of ships involved in the project.

The Cramlington- based Technology company will lead the project that is expected to last 26 months in total. There will also be support for AVID in the form of RED Engineering Limited, another North East based company that is based in Hexham. Other companies involved in the project will be Newcastle’s Royston Power and French Based Enogia S.A.S.

The project has just completed the development stage and could lead to heat recovery systems being installed on an offshore support vessel by the end of 2018 for another 6 months of testing. Whereas other types of transport are experimenting with different and more sustainable ways of powering their different vehicles, the maritime sector have yet to establish a credible way of moving away from fossil fuels and lowering their carbon Dioxide output. Hopefully the AVID project will improve the sectors fuel efficiency by recovering the heat emitted from the exhaust stream which could reduce the electrical load provided by the ship’s generators. The heat recovered though this method could lead to lowering the temperature of the exhaust as well as being able to the convert the heat into electricity.

The project is being funded by the Loughborough based company ETI. The hope is that the technology developed in this project will be able to be deployed across a variety of different marine vessels. These different vessels could include chemical tankers, general cargo vessels, container feeders and offshore support vessels as well as passenger ferries.