EMERGING BALLAST WATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The present excellent collection of documents has been made of the selected papers and presentations of the  IMO-WMU Global R&D Forum relating to the Emerging BWM Systems held some years back in Sweden. Nowadays, the great demand is there within the maritime industry for the development of the environmentally-friendly and also efficient BWM systems.

Taking this demand into account, the today's technological community has been dealing with the active developing of the various BWM systems to be able to cater to the emerging market of the ballast water technology, The systems in question have to undergo various applicable approval processes including the testing as per the  established testing procedures, in compliance with the requirements of the BWM Convention plus the Guidelines. While several systems are currently under development or approval process, testing among the BWM system TF, i.e. test facilities worldwide shows the gaps in the harmonization and methodology.

This has significantly contributed to the confusion and lack of confidence among the people involved in the development of the subject systems, and also among the ship owners. Therefore, it is really imperative that the end-users of the BWM systems have enough confidence that consistent and reliable testing methodologies are applied.