A series of recent ballast water management (BWM) system workshops conducted by ABS and a questionnaire completed by shipowners around the globe have found the industry to be broadly trending towards compliance as the regulatory deadlines near, but substantial operating challenges lie ahead.
The questionnaire, which included almost 500 vessels installed with BWM systems found the proportion of users who considered their systems to be ‘inoperable’ to have fallen to 6%, from 14% in a similar ABS audit from late 2017.
However, the number of owner/operators that reported their systems to be ‘operationally problematic’ jumped to 59% from 29%. While this is a worrying trend, it also reflects the operational learning curve inherent in operating systems.
About 35% of the installed ballast water management systems on the vessels were deemed to be operational at the time of the survey.
That said, with compliance requirements already in force for U.S. ballast water discharges and soon to be in force for more of the global fleet, owners and operators are still trying to gain critical experience with assorted BWM systems and the associated technologies.
Seven different types of BWM systems were examined, including those using:
• Filtration + Side-stream EC + Neutralization (used by 29% of respondents)
• Filtration + UV Treatment (20.7%)
• Ozone Treatment + Neutralization (19.9%)
• Filtration + Full Flow (In-line) EC + Neutralization (17.8%)
• Full Flow (In-line) EC (7.5%)
• Filtration + Chlorination via chemical addition (5%)
• Filtration + Deoxygenation (0.2%)
The questionnaire’s findings, which were supported by a series of workshops conducted in New Orleans, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Athens, included feedback from owners of bulk, gas, product, heavy-lift and vehicle carriers, as well as containerships.
The workshops shared the current best practices that support the integration of BWM systems, exploring the challenges of different technologies, ship types and sizes, operational and environmental conditions, operating frequencies, crew competencies and system-maintenance requirements.
Results varied between BWM technologies, but the feedback broadly revealed growing concerns among shipowners about the operational reliability of the systems, the operating expenses being as expected, the availability of vendor support, the quality of associated control software and adequate levels of crew training.
The questionnaire often exposed lengthy periods for full adoption of BWM system technology, which suggests the need for owners to urgently start the selection process and for them to resist the temptation to make cost their sole criterion.
In addition to many crews being unfamiliar with the systems they were tasked with operating, the questionnaire and seminar feedback found widely disparate levels of technical support being offered by the vendors.
These findings in particular should encourage shipowners to assign at least one company engineer to participate in the installation process, and to operate it as much as possible before the compliance deadline to build corporate and crew familiarity. Owners of large fleets would also be well advised to nominate one ship as the training platform; more resources may have to be spent on operating and training for that ship, but it would help build operational reliability by familiarising other crews before they deploy.
Just over 70% of the vessels surveyed had their BWM systems installed during construction, against almost 4% having been retrofitted during dry-docking; almost one quarter did not reveal where their ships’ systems where installed.
Across all technologies, about one third of respondents were happy with the reliability of the systems they had installed.
Isolating with any certainty the predominant source of the perceived unreliability proved difficult, however, as it varied based on BW treatment technologies used. Certainly, post-installation vendor support has proven difficult to secure, particularly for owners domiciled outside the country of original manufacture.
Other feedback suggested that of the under-performance ratings for what is essentially new technology, some were attributable to the skillsets of the crews operating the systems. Some the highest levels of dissatisfaction came from owners whose personnel received training ‘on the fly’ during commissioning, as onboard-acceptance testing was conducted.
About 40% of owners considered their systems to be ‘user friendly’, though given that this is a subjective evaluation, it is entirely possible that any two owners could judge the same treatment system from opposite sides of the spectrum. But the measure does speak to overall industry comfort levels with the technology.
ABS is updating its report on the best practices for operation of BWM systems, which was last published in August of 2017. The 2019 Report is expected to capture all the key discussions items, lessons and insight shared at the workshops in the U.S. and Asia.
* Senior Principal Engineer, ABS