Ballast water conundrum
(Oct 4 2010)
If shipowners allow the compliance dates of the 2004 Ballast Water Convention
to dictate their adoption of on board treatment systems, an estimated 16,000
ships will need outfitting in 2017.
This is 10,000 more than expected for each of the years before that date and is
largely attributable to the requirement for vessels with large ballast
capacities to comply with the convention by their first intermediate or renewal
survey from 2016.
"A bottleneck such as this in the supply of systems and the availability of
shipyards could have disastrous effects for shipowners and tankers and bulkers
with ballast capacities exceeding 5,000 cu m will be among the hardest hit,"
said Stein Foss, OceanSaver CEO.
"The pressure for engineers and shipyards to design and install systems quickly
raises obvious quality concerns but the issues go beyond that. Will the
manufacturers themselves have the experience required to adequately support
this demand? Will the quality of their staff and their control of their
supply-chain suffer if their capacity is stretched?" he asked.
Filters are just one example where any slight deterioration in standards can
result in serious efficacy problems that could affect the performance of the
treatment system as a whole. Many systems, particularly those using UV
radiation, rely in the effective filtration of sediment and larger organisms
prior to the main disinfecting process.
Foss said that he had already planned for the pitfalls that an installation
bottleneck could create and is implementing production capacity for the
OceanSaver ballast water treatment system to meet the expected growth in the
number of orders.
Nitrogen super-saturation offers reduced maintenance costs for ballast water
tanks. Comprehensive and independent corrosion and coating impact studies have
confirmed the system results in reduced corrosion rates and compliance with the
intentions of the IMO Performance Standard for Protective Coatings (PSPC).
"Corrosion mitigation is one of the very few commercial paybacks for the
installation of ballast water treatment systems and there is no need to wait
for the convention to realise the benefits," said Foss.
The convention is likely to enter into force in 2012 and even if compliance
dates subsequently change, delaying implementation won't resolve these issues,
said Foss.
===== fm tanker operator ===========
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