Ballast water system approval

The final approval is based on a directive issued by the IMO, which requires all deep-sea vessels to operate IMO-approved ballast water management systems. The IMO directive will come into force in the near future and will entail retrofitting approximately 50,000 sea-going vessels worldwide.

The Sicure system is a further development of the Chloropac system, which has seen 35 years of successful ship-board use for treating seawater cooling circuits. The electrolytic system produces hypochlorite from the salt contained in seawater.

Sicure consists of a filtration stage followed by electrochlorination and a dosing unit which precisely meters the addition of hypochlorite. Electrochlorination occurs in a sidestream of the ballast water main. Only about one percent of the ballast water to be treated is carried through the system’s electrolysis cells. Siemens say that this makes for small system components which are easily integrated into existing vessels.