Next generation solutions for ballast water treatment

Ballast water is the water stored in the ballast tanks of a ship in order to provide stability. Typically, when a ship enters a harbor in order to load cargo empties its ballast water that has carried through the voyage. Despite the importance of ballast water in the operation of a ship, it may pose serious ecological, economic and health problems due to the various marine species carried in the ship's ballast water. The transferred species may survive and establish a reproductive population in the host e nvironment, becoming invasive and out-competing native species. There is a number of ballast water treatment technologies that are utilized to treat the ballast water, ranging from UV to electrochemical generation of active substances for the ballast water treatment. However, the effectiveness of the different technologies is limited by the local seawater conditions. This project aims to the development of an advanced electrochemical technology suitable for the treatment of the ballast water, where the local conditions of the seawater e.g. salinity, temperature, and purity of seawater will not affect or have a minor impact on the effectiveness of the technology.

Ballast water is essential for shipping operations, it may, however, pose serious ecological, economic and health problems due to the various marine species carried in ship's ballast water. The transferred species may survive and establish a reproductive population in the host environment, becoming invasive and out-competing native species. While a number of Ballast water treatment processes exist, their effectiveness is limited by conditions such water composition or they might use non-environment friend ly components. The project aims at developing an advanced electrochemical process suitable for Ballast Water Treatment where salinity, temperature, and purity of seawater will have no or minor impact on energy consumption, operational cost, and reliabilit y of treatment. The project will address the use of seawater unconditionally in an electrochemical process to generate (electrogeneration) highly effective, powerful and environment friendly oxidant active substances.