Chlorine dioxide (ClO₂) is a powerful biocide that reacts with living cells by first penetrating the cell wall and then reacting with the material within the living cell in order to kill the organism. ClO₂ has been used in a wide variety of land-based treatment applications, including drinking water, municipal waste processing, food, pulp, and paper production for over 70 years. ClO₂ offers a number of advantages over other ballast water disinfection methods and techniques; it is effective on all aquatic organisms, including bacteria and other pathogens, and is effective anywhere in the world with no limitations when it comes to temperature, salinity or turbidity.

While both chlorine (bleach) and ClO₂ are oxidizing agents, they disinfect ballast water in two fundamentally different ways.
ClO₂ targets living cells and has very limited reactions with non-living organic matter present in ambient water. It works exceptionally well in waters with high levels of organic matter (“dirty” or turbid waters) and produces minimal disinfection by-products.

On the other hand, chlorine reacts with almost any organic material (living and non-living) such as oil, algae, sediments, etc. This means that waters with high levels of organic matter increase the demand for chlorine, leaving less of the chemical available to treat living organisms. This is typically addressed by increasing the dose in “dirty” water. Due to the types of reactions that chlorine has with both organic and inorganic compounds, chlorine has a greater potential to form undesirable disinfection by-products which can pose toxicity risks to both aquatic organisms and humans.
The high levels of chlorine required to treat ballast water comes with operating limitations — neutralization is required to ensure chlorine can be discharged safely and high concentrations of chlorine can damage ballast tanks.

Because ClO₂ is not affected by suspended sediments or turbidity, filtration is not necessary to remove sediments prior to treatment with ClO₂. This is in contrast to UV or similar technologies that require the removal of sediment for the UV light to disinfect ballast water, and electro-chlorination or similar hypochlorite-based treatment technologies, that require high doses of chlorine to treat “dirty” water. As a result, Ecochlor is uniquely suited to offer a filterless system with very low power consumption and chemical dose that also protects vulnerable tank coatings.

No. TRO sensors are typically used in electro-chlorination and similar chlorine-based BWMS technologies to regulate both the chlorine dose on uptake (in response to varying water conditions) and the neutralizing dose required during discharge. The Ecochlor system uses a fixed, low dose of ClO₂ regardless of water conditions. There is no requirement for neutralization on discharge there are no TRO sensors needed.

Ecochlor® BWMSs have some of the highest operating capacities in the ballast water treatment industry. Our current type approvals allow our system to be operated at flow rates of up to 116,200 m³/hour

Yes. Ecochlor receives crew feedback on every ballast operation, demonstrating that over 98% of Ecochlor® BWMSs are operational. Ecochlor’s BWMSs are inherently simple in their design and as we all know in the marine environment, simple means reliable – less equipment means easier operation for the crew and, of course, lower maintenance needs. Plus, we’ve made our already commendably reliable system even simpler and more reliable with the EcoOne® BWMS.