Roblems And Countermeasures Research Of Typical Ballast Water Treatments

Since the introduction of steel hulled vessels around 120 years ago, water has been used as ballast to stabilize vessels at sea. Ballast water is pumped-in to maintain safe operating conditions throughout a voyage. This practice reduces stress on the hull, provides transverse stability, improves propulsion and manoeuvrability, and compensates for weight lost due to fuel and water consumption.While ballast water is essential for safe and efficient modern shipping operations, it may pose serious ecological, economic and health problems due to the multitude of marine species carried in ships’ballast water. These include bacteria, microbes, small invertebrates, eggs, cysts and larvae of various species.The invasion of marine species into new environments caused by the ship’s ballast water has brought huge losses to the coastal state, the International Maritime Organization IMO passed the International Convention For The Control And Management Of Ships’Ballast Water And Sediments in London in February 2004. It creats standards for treatment of ballast water. This article reviews the current main ballast water treatment methods and their advantages and disadvantages, sums up the characteristics of the main ballast water treatment equipment approved by IMO, and clarifies that single ballast water treatment menthod is not feasible, comprehensive treatment is the main stream of ballast water treatment technology development in future. Based on the sailing ships, on the one hand, this paper proposes the corresponding feasible measures for the treatment methods, on the other hand, the author put forward a new ballast tank design philosophy and a suggestion of using other substance instead of sea water as a medium of ballast.