Alfa Laval has announced that its new test facility will be officially opened Jan. 15, 2014, although some full-scale prototype testing will be initiated in October.

“For the first time, it will be possible to test equipment and applications on the scale of a seagoing vessel – but with the control and convenience that only exist on land,” commented Peter Leifland, president of Alfa Laval’s Marine & Diesel Division. Among the applications he referred to is exhaust gas cleaning, which will be a major focus of the centre as Alfa Laval refines a new generation of PureSOx.

The new facility, which is taking shape on the site of the former Aalborg Shipyard, will comprise a test area of 250 square meters with an adjoining control and training complex. Built around a large 2 MW marine diesel engine, it will be supplied with seawater from the Limfjord.

The company said the centre will be the full-sized, land-based equivalent of a commercial vessel’s machinery room.

Among the equipment and systems to be tested are fuel lines, including fuel conditioning modules and separation modules; steam lines, including waste heat recovery units, hot well tanks, steam dump condensers and desalination units; exhaust gas lines, including selective catalytic reduction units, boilers and scrubbers; and ballast lines, including filters and advanced oxidation technology reactors.

Overseeing all equipment, according to a company statement, will be a unified control system, steered from a dedicated room at the facility. Remote access to the control system will be possible from other Alfa Laval sites.