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NEWS


BWTS Aquarius ready by


2012 Hamworthy says its ballast water treatment systems (BWTS) Aquarius UV and Aquarius EC should be type approved by the end of this year following six months of operational testing onboard ships. Aquarius UV uses ultraviolet light to clean ballast water,


while Aquarius EC uses an electro-chlorination (EC) system to achieve the International Maritime Organization (IMO) standard of no organisms larger than 50μ and less than 10 organisms/m3


. Joe Tomas, MD at Hamworthy BWTS, said that the


company “could not decide whether to develop a UV or an EC system aſter they had evaluated both and so we decided to develop both variations.” Development of the Aquarius systems followed the


acquisition two years ago of Greenship Sedinox which had achieved basic IMO approval for its EC system, final approval for the system came with recommendations to verify the system’s efficiency at low salinity, “it was unclear how far down the salinity range we could go and EC needs salt to work” said Mr Tomas. Te temperature of the water also affected the efficiency


of the system and a by-product of the EC process was hydrogen gas that needed to be vented and so operational restrictions were applied, “so we withdrew the product,” explained Mr Tomas. It became clear following the experience with Sedinox


that it would be better for Hamworthy to design its own system and add the necessary design into the new system including a hydrogen venting system that expels the gas before it reaches the ballast tanks. “We tested the system for five days in a holding tank with monitors for hydrogen and there was no build up of the gas,” said Mr Tomas.


Joe Thomas, the MD at Hamworthy BTWS, says that buying Greenship Sedinox “was not a mistake”, but an investment in R&D.


Failures of the Sedinox system are not considered to be


a mistake, even though the Greenship Sedinox acquisition was for €2 million with a further payment of €5 million on final approval. “We never paid the €5 million because final approval


was never achieved,” explained Mr Tomas, “but we don’t consider Greenship to be a mistake, it was an investment in an R&D project that Hamworthy were just not prepared to take to customers. We learnt a lot from the process though.”


Classification ClassNK: LNG not


the best option Former International Association of Classification Society chairman and president of ClassNK Noboru Ueda believes that liquefied natural gas (LNG) is not the best fuel for the future. Mr Ueda said: “I think LNG has a great potential for


use as ship fuel, especially from the standpoint of emission reduction. However, I do not think it is the best or only option, especially in the short term.” According to Mr Ueda the biggest obstacle for LNG “and


other alternative fuels is not technical, but logistical, and so long as logistical bottlenecks remain, the use of LNG as a fuel will remain limited”. As such the best way for the maritime industry to


achieve its emissions targets in the short term is to develop new technology such as more efficient engines, improved hull forms, and new equipment like air lubrication systems. “Reducing maritime emissions is a very important


issue, and meeting emission reductions will be a difficult challenge for the maritime industry. While it is hard to foresee what changes will have occurred in 40 years, I believe that the maritime industry will be able to meet the emission reduction targets for 2050. We have already seen an incredible amount of new green technology develop- ment over the past several years, and I think that the greatest developments are still yet to come,” he claimed. Speaking exclusively to Te Naval Architect at the recent


NorShipping event in Oslo, Norway, Mr Ueda added that aside from the environmental issues facing shipping one of the most important tasks for classification societies will be helping the maritime industry address the burden of new regulations. With each new regulation, the paperwork and time required for compliance continues to grow. This includes developing new software for creating


and maintaining Coating Technical Files for Performance Standards for Protective Coatings (PSPC) rules, new inventory management soſtware for compliance with the ship recycling convention, and a new ship construction file archive service in compliance with the Goal Based Standards. “If we can reduce the time necessary for document


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development and maintenance, then we can reduce the The Naval Architect July/August 2011


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