DESMI Ocean Guard A/S launched a new Ballast Water Management System – CompactClean. According to the manufacturer, the name reflects that this system sets a new standard for how small the footprint of a BWMS can get. At the same time, the system is designed and optimized to provide reliable and compliant treatment of ballast water under all operational conditions encountered by a ship in worldwide trade

“With the CompactClean system we have managed to develop a system that can treat ballast water everywhere in the world and meet both IMO (International Maritime Organisation) and U.S. Coast Guard standards," said Rasmus Folsø, CEO of DESMI Ocean Guard. "The system is free of any troubling operational limitations and can treat water independent of its salinity (fresh, brackish, and marine water) and temperature, and can operate at full flow in the vast majority of ports around the world. It is important to underline that this performance is global and the system does not include any special modes or similar that needs to be applied during discharge of ballast water in U.S. territory. For DESMI it has been important to provide the shipping industry with a solution that works globally without any special interference of the crew, and which can be installed very easily without relocating other equipment.”

The CompactClean BWMS consists of an automatic backflushing filter, a UV unit, valves, sensors and controls. The UV unit has a unique and patent pending shape which is the result of hundreds of state of the art numerical simulations. This shape ensures optimum dosage of the UV to all organisms in the water, and the result is a system that can meet even the very strict USCG type approval requirements. Furthermore, the system includes many features that are of importance to the daily operation. One example is automatic generation of PDF reports that document all the performed ballast water treatment, in a format that is suitable for submission to local port state authorities and others. Another example is that the system includes a pump that can be used as stripping pump under ballast stripping operations, thus solving one of the main problems for ballast water management system installations today.

The CompactClean BWMS is currently undergoing type approval testing according to both IMO and USCG requirements, under the surveillance of Lloyd’s Register. It is expected that type approval certificates will be in hand around May 2018.