Page 30: of Marine News Magazine (January 2017)

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BALLAST WATER TREATMENT

Out in Front on

Ballast Water

Treatment

In the choppy wake of the rati? cation of the IMO Ballast Water Treatment convention, the U.S. Coast Guard issues it ? rst US type-approval certi? cate. Installations are already underway on this side of the pond.

By Joseph Keefe hen the U.S. Coast Guard issued the long- awaited and much anticipated ? rst U.S. type-

W approval certi? cate for a ballast water manage- ment system on December 2nd of last year, the news lit a ? re under a maritime industry that had so far seen tepid ballast water treatment (BWT) system sales and an even cooler approach from vessel owners and operators who were, until now, reluctant to install expensive equipment that had no guarantee of being ultimately accepted as valid. Separately, and as MarineNews went to press, both

Alfa Laval and OceanSaver were also reporting U.S. Coast

Guard approvals. With other approvals expected in the near-term, there are arguably no more excuses for vessel owners to delay, any longer.

All of that said; there are no silver bullets in the BWT game. What works for one size vessel in certain trades, won’t work for another type of vessel in different waters, plying another grade of cargo. That’s because a BWT sys- tem’s energy consumption, throughput capacity, physical footprint and a dozen other variables all come into play when selecting the right system for a particular vessel. For

Optimarin, the Coast Guard Marine Safety Center is- sued the certi? cate after its application for U.S. type ap-

Optimarin’s USCG Type proval was determined to meet the requirements of the

Approved BWT system

Coast Guard’s type approval requirements contained in 46

C.F.R. § 162.060.

In a prepared statement, Rear Adm. Paul Thomas, assis- tant commandant for prevention policy said, “While this

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