I checked www.gcaptain.com and also the two sources that the OP article used as a basis for their article. Their Splash source was pretty good as is gcaptain.
The OP article omitted a few details that are useful for geeks like me. In addition, the only ships affected are those purchasing high sulfur fuel oil. These ships are equipped with sulfur scrubbers for exhaust scrubbing.
The HSFO met the standard ISO specification for HSFO. It took higher level analysis to ID the problem with abrasive solids causing damage to pumps and other moving parts that led to engine shutdowns. I think what they are saying is that it is not an excessive amounts of solids but instead their unusually abrasive properties.
The chlorinated hydrocarbons were mentioned but apparently are not a contributing to the reported engine shutdowns. I think the HCLs are a concern more for longer term engine damage. If this is right then I suspect it is a corrosion or perhaps embrittlement issue. 2000 parts per million chlorinated HCLs is wicked high for the kinds of things I worked with (which were not fuel oils like bunker).
The exact cause of the unusual HSFO (but ISO compliant) is in the process of being tracked through the supply chain to ID the point source. Maybe it's nefarious, which was my knee jerk reaction or maybe it's random. More details likely to come out.
They have filters on both the transfer and the engines but part of the transfer sampling is visual inspection.
You know, we were required to keep our samples and send them in for analysis and storage, if they did any...then they have them.
As far as the ISO Standard, you can meet it but fail to take samples correctly, if they were sampling correctly, they would have detected this.
We run each sample through a battery of tests, one of them is a disc filter, if you run the fuel through the disc you do a visual inspection of the disc, we also did a flow test on the filter to ensure there wasn’t invisible damage caused by the fuel.
Honestly, if they did it...this wouldn’t have happened.
The transfer tests exceed the standard for 50% of the samples, it is statistics. Any random sample can pass, you have to do the correct number of samples depending on how much is being transferred based on the flow rate..
Our sampling was anywhere from every 2-10minutes.
So do the chlorinated HCLs create a hydrochloric acid problem? Asking for a friend.