Shiprepair & Maintenance: 4th Quarter 2020
Finland’s Evac Group has recently introduced two new products to help with integration, and to be in compliance with regulations, when it comes to installing ballast water treatment equipment for retrofit.
The first is a device that is designed to simplify the integration of various components external to the treatment equipment; the second is a valve monitoring device, which meets the requirement for the treatment system to log by-pass routes of the ship’s systems.
Robert Field, technical director of Evac’s Cathelco division, says: “As the ship’s valves are not controlled by the treatment system this is not easy to achieve. There is also confusion as not all the class bodies are interpreting the rules the same.”
With this latest development, the ship’s valves can simply be connected to the Evac valve monitoring device and this in turn will send a monitoring signal to the treatment unit’s main control panel allowing for any by-pass to be logged in line with the Ballast Water Convention rules. This is particularly important if the ship does not have a fully incorporated IPMS (Integrated Platform Management System), the company points out.
Evac is achieving considerable success with its Evolution ballast water treatment technology as a retrofit option for specialist vessel types. The Evolution system has been developed over a 10-year period by Cathelco, which has been part of the Evac Group since 2018.
Earlier this year, Evac Evolution systems were installed on two platform supply vessels operated by Harvey Gulf International, Harvey Spirit and Harvey Supplier. Both had systems fitted with the capacity to treat ballast water at the rate of 250m³/h.
In 2016, a Cathelco ballast water management system was installed on the Harvey Stone, a multi-purpose field support vessel, also owned by Harvey Gulf International. “This has operated successfully over the past four years and its r ecord of reliability was an important factor in winning the contracts for the two latest vessels,” states Field.
Amongst other recent projects, the Evac Evolution system was installed on the ILV Granuaile, an aid to navigation vessel operated by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. In this case, the system installed has the capacity to treat ballast water at a rate of up to 250m³/h. The components were supplied in modular form enabling them to be distributed to ensure the best use of available space within the engine room.
A quick response was a vital factor in winning an order to supply an Evac Evolution ballast water treatment system for the cable laying vessel, Cable Ship Etisalat, operated by E-Marine PJSC and based in the United Arab Emirates.
“When E-Marine contacted us, they said it was essential that the system was delivered to Dubai within four weeks so that it could be installed when the vessel was in drydock,” says Stevenson Varghese, managing director of Cathelco Middle East, which won the contract. Technical proposals were submitted to the customer and approved within a matter of days, he points out, enabling the assembly of equipment and delivery to proceed at speed. Cable Ship Etisalat was supplied with an Evac Evolution mini-system with the capacity to treat ballast water at up to 55m³/h.
Based on a combination of filtration and UV technology, Evac Evolution features a ‘feedback loop’ which uses UV transmission as the parameter for precisely determining UV dosage. This ensures effectiveness in challenging water conditions but saves on power during normal operations. The system is available with capacities from 34m³/h to 1,500m³/h in a single unit and can be supplied in modular form for retrofits or skid mounted for newbuild applications
