There are many factors behind the choice of ballast water management systems, and a key selling point is the holding time of the ballast water to complete the reaction. The shorter the holding time, the quicker the vessel can flush the ballast system and decrease any risk of delays in port.
This is a critical factor for vessels undertaking multi-port voyages such as short sea tankers, container ships and roros. It is a less critical factor for VLCCs and Suezmax tankers and Capesize bulk carriers undertaking long sea passages.
This concept was explored at SMM 2018 in Hamburg by Rivertrace sales director Graham North and Bio-Sea technical supervisor Adrien Carpentier during discussions that took place after the joint announcement that Rivertrace is representing Bio-Sea ballast water management systems in southeast Asia.
The Bio-Sea ballast water management system (BWMS) was developed from the land-based systems that the manufacturer, Bio-UV has been selling for more than 20 years for swimming pools, industry and fish farms for application in fresh water, seawater and brackish water.
“That is why we went into ballast water treatment systems. We had all the technology and background required,” said Mr Carpentier.
Bio-UV, as the name suggests, is an ultra-violet light BWMS. According to Mr Carpentier, the Bio-Sea system uses banks of UV lamps operating at variable levels controlled by inputs from the sensors. It means that in general, the Bio-Sea BWMS runs to the required time, and therefore has excess capacity.
By taking advantage of the excess capacity, and modifying the software, Bio-UV aims to update current Bio-Sea installations to a zero hours holding time functionality.
“The Bio-Sea system is compact and simple,” said Mr North.
“The main selling point is the holding time. On freshwater, the holding time is zero. On seawater, the holding time is 24 hours. On brackish water, the holding time is 72 hours,”.
“All other systems are at 72 hours for all water types,” said Mr North.
How does Bio-Sea achieve the shorter holding times?
“All other systems were designed to meet IMO requirements, and later US Coast Guard requirements,” remarked Mr Carpentier.
“We had already met those requirements with our system, and with the spare capacity available, we have been able to reduce the holding times, as Mr North described.”
“The next stage is to exploit the spare capacity even further, and by the beginning of next year, we will be down to zero holding hours for all water types. This upgrade will be available for all currently installed Bio-Sea systems.”
The upgrade will be done by sending a memory chip to the ship. There will be no need for an engineer to install the software, according to Mr Carpentier.
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