The challenge of onboard ballast water sampling

摘要

The IMO convention on ballast water management onboard ships pre-sets limit values for the quality of the ballast water, which is discharged from ships' ballast tanks back to the sea. The IMO defines limit values for the numbers of individuals per volume for three target organism size classes.The compliance of these limit values demands the treatment of the ballast water by adequate technologies. To test the ballast water onboard ships and evaluate, if the limit values are kept, the ballast water has to be sampled from within the ballast water system installed onboard and has to be analysed in respect to these limit values.