phytoplankton and bacteria) to below the IMO ballast water discharge limits, outlined in the convention’s D2 standard.
At first glance, the use of a BWTS on-board a ship is a straightforward route for ship owners to take which enables them to meet pending legislation and ensure environmental damage resulting from shipping is reduced. However, there are many sides to the BWTS story, and ballast water treatment is fast becoming a hotly debated topic in the global shipping industry. PML Applications Ltd (trading subsidiary of Plymouth Marine Laboratory) has worked with BWTS manufacturers and this combined with attendance at recent ballast water industry meetings and workshops has given us a unique, independent and impartial snapshot of some of the concerns from different sections of the industry.
The Ship Owner The ship owner is the unwitting headline act in the ballast water treatment saga. They will soon be under a legal obligation to meet the IMO legislation. This obligation comes with a considerable price tag, as the estimated costs of equipping a VLCC with an effective type approved BWTS can run to several million pounds for no net gain in ship performance. In fact, a retro-fitted BWTS will require considerable additional power, space, and installation time, all of which are in short supply on most ships and will eat into operational costs and hence profit margins.
The ship owner is also a target for the BWTS manufacturer and distributors. With an estimated potential market in BWTS in the region of 36 billion pounds, competition is fierce, and sales pitches are imaginative and abundant.
Escherichia coli (
E.coli) - A microbial disease causing bacteria known for its ability to survive in ballast water. Credit: Eraxion/Dreamstime
Choosing a BWTS, that will meet the regulations, is theoretically made less risky as a result of the IMO type approval system. Type Approval involves independent testing of a BWTS system at a licensed validation centre under a variety of environmental conditions. Type Approval, which will be a legal requirement, should ensure that an approved system is fit for purpose. However, this process has already been questioned after an approved system failed during operation in extreme environmental conditions. It also fails to provide reassurance that the BWTS will continue to meet IMO ballast water discharge standards after prolonged operation in service.
It seems that, in general, ship and fleet owners are keen to reduce the environmental impacts of shipping as part of their corporate and social responsibility activities. The potential environmental threat of ballast water discharge is also generally accepted. It is difficult to ignore this issue given the vast volumes of water discharged globally (approximately 3-5 billion tones per year) and the spread and speed at which shipping routes routinely cover the global ocean waters.
Ship owners will need to make an informed decision about which BWTS to invest in. However, the information required to make such a decision is currently only available from the manufactures themselves, who can be reasonably accused of having a vested interest. or through the issue of a type approval certificate which, for some systems, has been subject to scepticism. All of this leaves the ship owner in an unenviable position of being forced through regulation to make a large investment in essentially unwanted technology, without the independent and impartial advice required to make an informed decision.
The Device Developer It is easy to have little concern for BWTS developers, as they compete in the race towards a slice of what is potentially a huge pie. However, it seems from our research that there is a danger that an un-equal playing field developing.
It has been argued that BWTS developers that pushed their technology to market early, before the type approval process has been fully debated in the community, may have an unfair advantage. Their technology, it seems, may not meet the requirements of all flag states. There is some debate in the ballast water community about what data is required to prove the environmental safety of
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