Revolutionising ballast water treatment

DESMI Ocean Guard is the global leader in the development and supply of environmentally friendly ballast water treatment systems. Philip Yorke spoke to Rasmus Folso, the company’s CEO, about its latest innovative products and move into new markets.

DESMI Ocean Guard was founded in 2009 by three major companies within the maritime industry, and is dedicated to the protection of the marine environment. The three companies that form DESMI Ocean Guard are: Maersk, UltraAqua and DESMI. Together these shareholders have more than 300 years’ experience in the maritime industry. By combining the vessel operating expertise from A.P.Moller – Maersk, the water treatment knowledge of UltraAqua and the unrivalled pumping know-how of DESMI, the new company offers a unique platform to develop reliable, cost-effective and 100 per cent efficient Ballast Water Treatment Systems worldwide.

New ballast water concept

DESMI Ocean Guard A/S has developed and ‘type approved’ its unique OxyClean Ballast Water Treatment System, which is also the first of its kind to be successfully tested in fresh water. The OxyClean system includes a unique utilisation of in-situ generated ozone, which allows a three step treatment of ballast water, from filtration to UV radiation and finally ozone injection. The chemical and risk study conducted by the IMO GESAMP panel concluded that the ozone was immediately absorbed by organic material and therefore not even TRO monitoring of the treated water was required.

DESMI Ocean Guard’s OxyClean System was also type approved by Lloyds Register of Ships in November 2012 and later DNV also gave the OxyClean System its full safety assessment approval. In addition, ABS has also type approved the OxyClean System by the company. This means that DESMI Ocean Guard’s OxyClean Ballast Water System is recognised by the world’s three major classification societies, which in itself is a remarkable tribute to the product’s efficacy, reliability and eco-friendly operation.

Mr Folso said, “This bold and pioneering programme to reduce the environmental footprint of shipping at sea and reduce energy consumption concerning ballast water treatment, would not have been possible without the dedication of the big three companies involved and the huge investment needed to drive the programme forward. Our system utilises low pressure UV lamps which consume 30-40 per cent less energy than the common high pressure UV lamps. The international requirement concerning more environmentally friendly maritime practices by the IMO was adopted in 2004. However, the convention only comes into force when at least 30 member states representing at least 35 per cent of the world’s gross tonnage ratify the convention. To date 37 member states representing 30.32 per cent of the world gross tonnage have ratified and the convention it is therefore not yet in force.

“The next twelve months are crucial for the ratification of the new IMO legislation rulings. Unfortunately, not all IMO member states are as dedicated to ‘green’ policies as we are, and our nightmare scenario is that some countries will set their own ballast water discharge legislation if the IMO convention is not ratified very soon.

“This would result in each port setting its own rules and standards, thereby making it impossible for shipowners to meet all the requirements at the many ports throughout the world. Standardising ballast water treatment legislation is therefore a very important issue indeed. The USA has already set its own legislative standards for ballast water treatment discharge but fortunately these are very similar to the IMO regulations and therefore do not pose a serious problem for us.

“Our system is designed to perform for the lifetime of the ship; however, as you would expect, UV lamps need to be replaced at certain intervals, but they have a life expectancy of over 10,000 operating hours and

so replacement is a rare event, as would be the changing of the filter candles inside the filter which only need replacing a few times throughout the lifetime of the vessel.

“Currently our system is only being installed in new-build vessels, but retro-fitting will be an increasing market in years to come. We design and prepare the whole package but the big shipyards carry out all the installations. Our main markets are China, Japan and Korea but we see a growing future for our products in North and South America and for offshore and cruise vessels produced in Europe, Norway, Germany and Italy. We work with the UV lamp manufacturers to develop optimal UV lamps and treatment systems and use only experienced, dedicated licensed fabricators for the manufacture of our systems overseas.

“We are not the cheapest supplier in the market but definitely the best and our innovative technology, high quality and reliability means that ship-owners will not be facing huge bills in a few years’ time when poorer substitutes to ours start to fail. Added to this, of course, is the fact that our systems are 100 per cent environmentally friendly, in fact our efforts in this area were recognised recently when the Danish Crown Prince visited out facilities in Denmark as part of a government initiative to promote innovative and environmentally friendly technology.”

Setting new benchmarks

DESMI Ocean Guard’s latest addition to its product portfolio is its unique RayClean system and this complements the company’s successful OxyClean system. Both are based on mechanical filtration and UV irradiation with highly efficient low-pressure lamps, but whereas a single OxyClean UV-unit can treat 100m3/h of ballast water, the new RayClean UV units can treat 300m3/h. This makes the RayClean system even more cost-effective at higher flow rates.

The new RayClean system sets new standards for the industry in terms of both treatment performance and power consumption. When developing this system, the company wanted to design a unit that would be capable of coping with extremely challenging water conditions whilst at the same time reducing power consumption to the lowest level in its class.

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As a result, in extremely challenging conditions such as very muddy water ‘type approval’ testing has demonstrated that the RayClean system can treat water with UVtransmission as low as 0.33 and still satisfy the IMO and US Coast Guard discharge standards. This latest innovative development represents yet another new maritime benchmark set by DESMI Ocean Guard. n

For further details about DESMI Ocean Guard’s innovative products and services visit: www.DESMIoceanguard.com