During the last 30 years pollution of the world's oceans has become a matter of increasing international concern. Most of it originates from land-based sources. Nevertheless, a significant amount of pollution is caused by shipping and maritime activities generally. In tonnage terms the most important pollutant resulting from shipping operations is oil. In the introductory part of the paper an assessment of the amount of oil damped into the seas from ships is made. Shortcomings of the de-oiling systems installed on ships today are discussed. To reduce further the oil pollution threat more effective methods of oil separation from ship's bilge and ballast waters are proposed. A better solution to avoid oil pollution seems to be disposal of oily waters to reception facilities in ports. Therefore to realize such an idea, special ships with proper systems designed as reception stations of all kinds of oily waters from various ships are proposed and described. These special ships shall be equipped with non-conventional separation units, like hydrocyclones and filters operating on an adsorption principle. Finally various solutions of complex reception systems consisting of special ships or barges are proposed. It is concluded that disposal of oily ship's waters to special reception facilities is a safer way of minimizing the risks of oil pollution.
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