Ship Exhaust Real-Time Monitoring System based on Automatic Identification System

Maritime traffic is a major source of pollutant gases and we believe that it is important to quantify these gases in order to assess their impact on the environment. This paper proposes a maritime monitoring system able to estimate in real time the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and particulate matter (PM) from ships crossing the Strait of Gibraltar area. The system works based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) : it consists of an AIS receiver connected to a computer in which was installed an application able to determine, store and display emissions from ships. The computer application was performed according to a method for estimating CO2 and PM emissions from AIS data. The system was installed near the Strait of Gibraltar (exactly in Tangier Morocco) and tests were carried out for about a month (between March 26 and April 23, 2014). The system recorded emissions from 900 to 4000 tons of CO2 and 2 to 9 tons of PM each day.