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Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) has announced the completion of the retrofitting of exhaust gas cleaning systems on two of its ships, the Norwegian Jade and Norwegian Sun.

In conjunction with the cruise line's Sail & Sustain environmental program, the new scrubber systems are aimed at significantly reducing air emissions whilst also enabling the vessels to comply with the upcoming global sulphur cap of 0.5 percent on marine fuel in 2020.

Early in 2014, NCL committed to retrofitting six of its vessels, with the latest installations bringing the total number of ships in the fleet with scrubbers to eight.

The ships' new lightweight in-line scrubbers are a hybrid technology developed by Yara Marine Technologies that are able to operate in open loop, closed loop and closed loop with bleed off mode.

The new system works by 'scrubbing away' the sulphur oxide and particulate matter before the emissions leave the stack to decrease the amount that is released into the air, resulting in a clean white plume of steam.

In the latest installations for the Norwegian Sun and Norwegian Jade, five scrubbers were installed, one per engine, covering the whole propulsion system.

Collectively, the scrubbers are said to be capable of reducing sulphur emissions by up to 99 percent and particulate matter to the air by 85 percent.

NCL became the first cruise line to install scrubbers with a state-of-the-art water membranes filtration unit in 2016. This sophisticated water cleaning system uses ultrafiltration technology to clean the recirculated water during the closed-loop operation down to clear water. The by-product is collected and removed in drums.

As part of Sail & Sustain, NCL's Safety and Environmental Protection Policy establishes several objectives relating to the environment, which include reducing the impact of its operations on the environment, disposing garbage and waste materials in accordance with national and international rules and regulations, recycling and re-using materials and establishing specific objectives and targets for continual improvement of environmental management programs.

The eight NCL ships outfitted with scrubber technology are Norwegian Jade, Norwegian Sun, Norwegian Pearl, Norwegian Gem, Norwegian Escape, Norwegian Joy, Pride of America and the line's newest ship, Norwegian Bliss, which is due to sail in June 2018.