Damen’s Ballast Water Treatment Solution en Route for Type Approval
Damen’s unique mobile ballast water discharge technology InvaSave is an innovative solution that will help pave the way for compliance in ports and is on track to obtain IMO type approval as it enters into the last phase of certification by the Dutch flagstate.
The InvaSave technology has been successfully tested in various representative challenging water conditions and the official land-based testing was completed at the MEA test institute in the Netherlands in 2015. Damen is proud to announce that final shipboard tests have commenced this week on board of the 800TEU container vessel Henrike Schepers.
Damen’s Manager Ballast Water Treatment, Gert-Jan Oude Egberink says, “InvaSave is the world’s first and only technology on the market today to treat ballast water at discharge in only one step. It can therefore serve as a port-based alternative for those ship owners that may not want to retrofit an on board treatment system, perhaps because their ships operate on non-exempted fixed routes or their ships are so old as to make any investment in such a system is prohibitively expensive. Alternatives like InvaSave are also required for ports that need to provide backup in the case of emergencies when ships’ on board treatment systems fail.”
Damen can deliver the InvaSave technology in a self-sufficient mobile container, which can be put onboard a service barge or moved around the port on a trailer or a pontoon.
Test protocols are in line with IMO BWMC test guidelines and additional requirements of the Dutch flagstate. Unlike conventional on board ballast water treatment systems, InvaSave is a mobile discharge technology for port services. During the shipboard tests, ballast water will be taken in untreated and the efficacy of the technology will be validated upon discharge only. IMO type approval is expected to be obtained Q3 2016 and a patent is pending.