Markets
marine
THE CHALLENGE
On average 12 ships a month catch fire globally. To extinguish the fire on average 30000 tons of sea water is pumped into the ship, this then becomes a toxic soup which will cause untold damage to any ecosystem exposed to it. Triton Cleantech can treat the contaminated fluid and remove any dangerous elements so that it can be decommissioned or repaired. The large mobile units would attend the port at which the vessel is secured and pump out to sea.
Worldwide traffic from both the shipping and leisure sectors have great potential to cause marine pollution with ships running into difficulty at sea on a daily basis. The environmental impact of oil spills can be disastrous, from the physical smothering of organisms, ecosystem changes and chemical toxicity with lethal effects upon flora and fauna. A solution to mitigate the effects of this type of pollution is necessary within the marine salvage industry and our products do just that.
Since the introduction of steel-hulled vessels around 120 years ago, water has been used as ballast to stabilise 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 changes in various cargo load levels and 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 transferred species may survive to establish a reproductive population in the host environment, becoming invasive, out-competing native species and multiplying into pest proportions.
The problem of invasive species in ships’ ballast water is largely due to the expanded trade and traffic volume over the last few decades and, since the volumes of seaborne trade continue to increase, the problem may not yet have reached its peak yet. The effects in many areas of the world have been devastating. Quantitative data show that the rate of bio-invasions is continuing to increase at an alarming rate and new areas are being invaded all the time.
The spread of invasive species is now recognised as one of the greatest threats to the ecological and the economic well being of the planet. These species are causing enormous damage to biodiversity and the valuable natural riches of the earth upon which we depend. Direct and indirect health effects are becoming increasingly serious and the damage to the environment is often irreversible.
TRITON cleantech’s SOLUTION
Ratification of the IMO Ballast Water Management (BWM) Convention this year provides a driving force opening up this area for more competition. These units could be installed in the ship's hull or occupy a dockside building and service the ships as they load/offload, if the ship is refilled with clean treated sea water they would have a clean ticket at their next destination to release the ballast, a database could be compiled and the ballast water could be treated to match the destination-salinity, pH etc.