• Name: RIVER
• Funder: European Commission (via Interreg NWE)
• Value: Over €1.9million in funding, with the University of Bedfordshire receiving €400,000
• Who is involved: 10 parters and 5 associates
• Project length: 3 years (2017-2020)

The EU recently adopted rules requiring limits to carbon emissions and type-approval of internal combustion engines for Non-Road Mobile Machinery, and this set more stringent limits for emissions from inland waterway vessels.

There is an urgent need for emission reduction due to stronger environmental standards aims. Replacing NWE’s ageing fleet with RIVER technology offers the potential for emission reduction.

The objective of RIVER is to reduce or eliminate the pollutants from the polluting engines. It is expected that 6600 engines on existing vessels will need to be replaced in 2018-50 and 2400 new vessels will come into operation.

RIVER aims to address these issues and to apply an Oxy-fuel combustion technology for Diesel engines that eliminates NOx (part of the GHG), and to capture and store all CO2 emissions and reduce fuel consumption by up to 15%. This technology will then be tested, demonstrated and embedded on an existing vessel operating in the UK. A small-scale lab transforming CO2 into bio-solvent will be implemented and a feasibility study for a large vessel will be carried out during the project.