DESMI Ocean Guard BWMS hold time cut to two hours

CompactClean 750 BWMS

Aalborg, Denmark, headquartered DESMI Ocean Guard A/S reports that the U.S. Coast Guard has issued an amended type approval certificate for the CompactClean Ballast Water Management System (BWMS). As a result, the system has just a two hours minimum hold time restriction in U.S. waters. Additionally, the amended certificate allows installation in hazardous areas.

Minimum hold time is the shortest allowable time that ballast water must be kept in the ballast tanks between the ballast uptake and discharge operations.

The reduction of the minimum required hold time to just two hours in all salinities and water temperatures has been achieved without changing anything in the BWMS or how it operates.

“The performance of the CompactClean BWMS is so superior that, unlike other UV based BWMS, we have not had to reduce the flowrate in the system to achieve the shortest minimum required hold time in the industry of just two hours,” says Rasmus Folsø, CEO of DESMI Ocean Guard A/S. ‘Likewise, the 2 hours hold time is achieved without introducing any new limitations on the UV intensity applied in the UV reactor. It is exactly the same BWMS operated in exactly the same way as previously, with just one operation mode used globally. This significantly simplifies the operation as there is no need for knowing the de-ballast location and the expected hold time of the ballast water at the time of ballast water uptake, in order to determine if the BWMS should be operated in IMO or U.S. mode depending on the discharge location, or in longer or shorter hold time mode. In fact, we have just managed to considerably simplify the ballast water operations of ships in global trade!”

The amended USCG type approval certificate now covers all the ATEX and IECEX certified versions of CompactClean BWMS, allowing its installation in hazardous areas on board oil, gas and chemical tankers flying both U.S. and non-U.S. flags.

The CompactClean BWMS comes in 14 different flowrate sizes, with the smallest having a maximum flowrate of 35 cu.m/h, and the largest having a maximum flowrate of 3,000 cu.m/h. The largest UV unit has a 1,500 cu.m/h max capacity, and by combining two of these in parallel, the 3,000 cu.m/h flowrate is achieved.