Ballast Eductors for stripping Ballast Tanks

Ballast tanks are integral part of large ships. The Ballast tanks are periodically filled and emptied in order to maintain the Ships’s stability and draft.
The process of filling the Ballast Tanks is known as ballasting while the emptying process is known as De-Ballasting.
Large ships use Ballast Pumps and Ballast Eductors to perform the Ballasting & De-Ballasting operations.

Ballast Eductors are Liquid Eductors that operate on the basis of the jet venturi principle Ballast Eductors utilize the energy in pumped water to suck water from the tanks and pump it out from the outlet.

Most importantly Ballast Eductors are self priming in nature and unlike Ballast Pumps do not require any sperate priming action. This enables Ballast Eductors to be started directly even in case of low water levels in Ballast Tanks.

Ballast Eductors are able to handle high suction lifts and often suck water even from a 8m suction lift. This is helpful in removing water from the tanks even from the lowermost levels.

Typically the driving water requirement varies from 3 bar(a) to 12 bar(a) i.e a pump head of 20m to 110m. The required driving water can be easily provided from the onboard ballast pumps and 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