Development of technologies on test facility and procedures for the land-based test as a type approval test at ballast water treatment system

The international convention for the control and management of ships ballast water & sediments was adopted at a diplomatic conference of IMO at 2004. Following to the Convention, fourteen guidelines were developed by IMO. The efficacy of ballast water management systems should be evaluated by administration in accordance with Guidelines for approval of ballast water management systems(G8). This guideline includes general requirements concerning design and construction, technical procedures for evaluation and the procedure for issuance of the type approval of ballast water management systems requires both land-based and shipboard testing. This paper considers the matter of facility and procedures for the land-based test as a type approval test. KORDI (Korea Ocean Research & Development Institution) is the designated Organization for land-based and shipboard testing for type approval of ballast water management systems in the Republic of Korea. When the testing body reviewed the various possibilities for the construction of a land-based test site, we found it not easy and very costly to pump sea water or fresh water containing high density of micro-organisms to an in-land test site. Therefore, it was decided to build a test barge dedicated for land-based tests. The barge was designed very similar to an actual ship with ballast tanks and its ballasting and de-ballasting method. The barge ship is composed of four 200 m³ tanks and a ballast water management system that is capable of pumping 300 tons of ballast water per hour with each pipe. A blower system is installed for the cleaning of the sampling tanks. There are four tanks of 2 m³ to control the dosage and each tank has an attached output valve to allow the possibility of sampling.