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Engineering and installation of a ballast water treatment system

08.06.2017

The new International Convention on the Control and Management of Ballast Waters of the Sea enters into forсe in September 2017. In this way, IMO aims to prevent the spread of harmful aquatic organisms from one region to another, by establishing standards and procedures for the management and control of ships' ballast water. After all, ships annually move from 3 to 5 billion tons of ballast water, and together with them a large number of alien flora and fauna around the world.  There are many reported cases when the invasion of certain marine organisms damaged the ecological and the economic wellbeing of the coastal and inland waters of the region. The three most notable cases include the appearance of the striped mussel in the Great Lakes, the combed jellyfish in the Caspian Sea and the outbreak of cholera in Peru in 1991.

Under the Convention, eventually most ships will need to install an on-board system for ballast water treatment. On the eve of the entry into force of the "Ballast Convention", Marko Ltd offers engineering and installation services for the new PureBallast 3.1 system, Swedish manufacturer Alfa Laval. For the first time the system was introduced back in 2006, and became the world's first commercially available ballast water treatment system. Long-term research experience allowed Alfa Laval to launch a new generation of the system - PureBallast 3.1. The plant fully satisfies all the requirements of IMO and USCG. Besides, the new version is much more efficient, economical and compact than its predecessors.

In the UV reactor, the UV light in combination with the water generates free radicals. The radicals are extremely reactive and react with microorganisms, damaging cell membranes. Therefore, the UV light destroys the DNA of microorganisms, and their ability to reproduce is lost.

 Today, Alfa Laval offers a flexible line of plants with a capacity of 170, 300, 600, 1000 m3 / h. The plant capacity can be increased up to 6000 m3 / h by using different variations of reactors. Besides new reactors with a capacity of 1000 m3 / h in full load mode consume only 100 kW and allow a minimum of 50 percent energy savings due to the management of the system with modern software.

Marko Ltd engineers also notice another advantage of PureBallast 3.1, its high operational flexibility and ease of installation. After all, with the increase in reactor capacity more than four times, its size has practically not changed. Therefore, to treat the required volume of water, now it will take less equipment and less time and costs to install it. In addition, the maximum distance at which the lamp control cabins can be installed up to 150 meters, and this greatly simplifies the engineering of the system. To date, more than 600 plants have been installed all over the world. Moreover, since the specialists of Marko Ltd have been trained in the engineering and installation of the PureBallast 3.1 system at the training center of Alfa Laval in Stockholm, today in Ukraine it is possible to install systems of any configuration for a vessel of any class.  That is, we are offering to the ship-owners a turn-key solution, starting with the selection of equipment and ending with its installation and following maintenance.

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