SARC Global Solution to Ballast Water Discharge Problem

Irving A. Backman, internationally renowned benefactor of sustainability and advanced technology initiatives and the leader of The DATT Group (Developers of Advanced Technology Today) in conjunction with SARC GLOBAL, creators of breakthrough engineered solutions to the world’s shortage of drinkable water, is addressing the urgent problem of pollution caused by commercial shipping discharges of ballast water.

Contaminated waters from the oceans, lakes, bays, wells, or other sources of contaminated water will be treated by the Ballast Water Discharge System (WBDS) before it can enter any one of the ballast water tanks of each vessel. 

The BWDS may weigh between 150 to 750 pounds and may be the size of a 3-drawer file cabinet or smaller, and will be able to process from 2,000 to 20,000 gallons of contaminated water per hour before it enters any ballast water tank of the marine vessel. Because the BWDS is modular, any quantity of water can be discharged, per hour or per day, even up to several million gallons per day, for each vessel.

The decontamination process will eliminate all organic matter greater that 2.5 microns (0.0001”). The System will therefore exclude nearly all aquatic unicellular organisms and plant material including cellular detritus. Additionally, particulates of all types, both buoyant and suspended turbid material, are removed from the fluid stream. Thus, only clean, sterile water will enter each ballast water tank. 

However, because of the possibility that the tanks may already have some contamination on their interior walls, which, of course, would grow during the voyage and thus contaminate the new clean water. With this in mind, the BWDS can be turned on during the voyage for short time-periods, to kill or destroy any regrowth of prior contaminants. Thus, only clean purified water will be ready for the final discharge. 

Further, our System is designed so that, even on discharge, the same System will be utilized for the third time, to be certain that no contaminants are contained within this discharge, and this will be the third decontamination process that should be essentially 99.99 % effective, at each stage of usage. 

It should be noted that no chemicals or toxic materials will be utilized in any of the above three redundant decontamination processes, nor will there be any significant amount of power required, and these quantities can be determined in advance, depending on the volume of water to be processed in each stage. It should also be noted that there will be no requirement to move any small or large quantities of water from one tank to another, during the entire voyage. 

Likewise, this technology is a radical departure from other technologies currently proposed for handling the invasive species pollution that plague the waterways, and is dramatically more effective and less costly than any other technology that requires far higher energy consumption and manpower, at each stage of processing the water in, or discharging it out to whatever port or area selected.

Full estimates of each BWDS cost can be provided, once the entire volume of ballast water requirements is provided, and the approximate length of each voyage before the discharge date, as well as some indication of the existing pumping ability that is currently available for both the intake and discharge. 

Of course, the number of ballast tanks, and quantity of water in each tank, if there is a variance, will be required. Additional details may also be helpful for each proposal, depending on location of intake and of discharge will be required, and whatever hours per day can be allocated to both the intake and discharge periods of time.  We might also note that some form of screen material prior to the first water intake will be required to initially prevent the intake of objects over 1/4 –inch in diameter.