Ballast Eductors for Ballast Water Management Systems
The International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004 (BWM Convention), entered into force globally on 8 September 2017.
The BWM convention’s new rules states that all new ships need to be incorporated with Ballast Water Treatment systems
Later on an amendment in 2019 extended the regulation to existing ships
So as per the new regulations all ships are required to treat the ballast water during de-ballasting process before discharging it to the seas.
Ballast Eductors are commonly used on ships for the de-ballasting operation. So as per new regulations the Ballast Eductors have to pump the water to the Treatment equipment and then out to the sea.
The treatment equipment creates an additional pressure drop and increases the discharge head requirements of the Ballast Eductor.
For new ships the increase in discharge head is not a big issue as it will be factored in while selecting the Eductors and designing the pipelines.
But for Old ships, the treatment system will be retrofitted while the Ballast Eductors and the piping will be asper original design. This is going to significantly alter the operating requirements of the Ballast Eductors due to the increase in discharge head and may require the Eductors to be replaced.
We at Crystal TCS have developed a range of Ballast Eductors that can provide higher discharge heads than regular Eductors. It enables the shipowners to directly replace the Eductors while largely maintaining the other existing setup.
This new range of Eductors can provide Discharge heads as high as 45m and operate with a driving pressure head of 50~120m. The required driving water can be easily provided from the onboard fire pumps thus requiring no additional infrastructure.
Benefits of Ballast Eductors in Ballasting Operation
• Capacity to provide high suction lifts helps in stripping the tanks to the lowermost levels.
• Self-priming nature enables quick start-up.
• Ballast Eductors do not contain any moving parts and have large internal passage areas, hence are not vulnerable to clogging by solid particles.
• As they have no moving parts, maintenance requirements are very less. Also it reduces largely the risk of abrupt breakdowns, helps in maintaining the regular operating schedule
• Silent Operation