Damen unveils ballast water pre-filter barge

Many ports located on rivers experience a sediment level significantly higher than the level to which onboard ballast water treatment systems are tested.

Damen Green Solutions product portfolio manager, Matthijs Schuiten, explained. “The level to which onboard systems are tested demonstrates an ability to handle sediment levels up to 50mg per litre. However, at some terminals, this level is exceeded – sometimes considerably. We recently ran tests on a waterway in the US close to a harbour, for example, and found sediment levels 30 times above this.”

Notable cases of important waterways that exceed the level include the Huangpu Jiang in Shanghai, the River Thames in London and the Red and Mississippi rivers in the US.

Damen’s answer is the new BWPF Barge, designed to go alongside a vessel at terminal and filter the sediment before ballast water is taken aboard. The BWPF barge can process up to 4,000m³ water per hour with a sediment level anything between 50 and 1,500mg per litre.

Filtration is available between 10 and 50 micron, to suit varying sediment sizes and the entire ballast water filtration system fits inside a standard 40’ container, making logistics straightforward.