Enhancing Ballast Water Separator Performance Through Design Modification

摘要

The introduction of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens to new environments via ships' Ballast Water (BW) has been identified as one of the greatest threats to the world's oceans. During the last decade an increase attention had been given to the ballast water problem world wide. This research describes a treatment that can dramatically reduce the organisms' adhesive to the sea soil in ballast water while providing economic benefits to ship owners. A cyclonic separator, OptiMar® model, was under investigation to evaluate its performance through introducing design modifications to increase solid particulates removal at various operating conditions. The modifications were: a) changing the horizontal position of the internal separator disc and varying the inlet mass flow rate with the use of three different particle sizes of 1.18, 0.85 and 0.3 mm, b) changing the separator disc diameter, and controlling the exit valves opening using two particle sizes of 1.18 and 0.85 mm. Based on the first modification, separator disc position no.2 with particles size greater than 0.85 mm gave the best separating efficiency. On the second modification, separator disc diameter no.1 with 1.18 mm particles gave the highest efficiency for our proposed design of ballast water separator.