Ecochlor, Inc. is pleased to announce the completion of three retrofit installations for SCF Novoship Technical Management, a subsidiary of one of the largest shipping companies in Russia.
The Ecochlor Technical Services Team, along with engineering firm Argo Navis Marine Consulting & Engineering, Ltd., were onsite at dry dock in Croatia to install the ballast water treatment system (BWTS) on the NS Stream, and at dry dock in Turkey to complete installation on two sister ships, the NS Consul and NS Century.
“The NS Consul and NS Century are typical tankers with ballast pumps located in the cargo pump room. This allowed for the installation of the ballast water filter in the cargo pump room in close proximity to the ballast pumps. However, the ballast pump capacity on these ships is high, which means large filters are needed. To install the filters in their final location, temporary openings had to be cut into the ship because they would not fit through the existing openings,” said Andreas Kokkotos, co-founder of Argo Navis.
The NS Stream is a medium range, ice class, oil/chemical tanker built in 2006. Submerged ballast pumps, as well as situating portions of the treatment system in both hazardous and non-hazardous zones, led to a difficult engineering design and installation for the Ecochlor retrofit. Adding to the complexity of the project, the NS Stream is an ice class vessel that operates in waters as low as -30 °C. The Ecochlor treatment system and filters have to be maintained at temperatures above 0 °C, so additional piping was installed to heat the space.
“Ecochlor was pleased with the results of these installations as we achieved our goal to release the vessel from dry dock with minimal disruption and with a DNV GL certification in hand,” said Tom Perlich, Ecochlor co-founder and president. “We look forward to a long collaboration with SCF Novoship Technical Management as we begin to plan for two additional installations scheduled for October and November of this year.”