Onshore Reception Facilities for ballast water

Abstract

This paper completes an exploration analysis of onshore ballast water treatment alternatives at major ports. e authors had presented results for option (1) ballast water treatment onshore installed in two iron ore ports in 2012 applying the discrete events simulation model. Now, two more options are presented: (2) mobile and (3) desalination reception facilities. e previous simulation model developed called TRANSBALLAST, was adapted to consider these two new alternatives. is model was applied to the same ports presented in 2012 and this evaluation also includes one more port with 50 million tons annually (Mta) of iron ore transport capacity. e results uncovered that for (2) there is an increase of 1.90 days on the average waiting time of ships that moored at Port 1. In (3), the average waiting time and berth occupation rates were observed to remain the same presented in (1). One of the major differences between the systems consists in catching sea water to increase the desalination plant operational capacity. Among those three onshore ballast water treatment alternatives, (2) does not impact port terminals infrastructure. Additionally, option (2) could be offered to ports users as a ballast water treatment service and ship-owners might not need any onboard ballast water treatment system. (3) Might be feasible to ports regions without enough water supplies solving two issues: transfer of invasive species from ballast water and water recycling.