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Generic Protocol for the Verification of Ballast Water Treatment Technology
Citation:
NSF International. Generic Protocol for the Verification of Ballast Water Treatment Technology. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-10/146, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
In anticipation of the need to address performance verification and subsequent approval of new and innovative ballast water treatment technologies for shipboard installation, the U.S Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency‘s Environmental Technology Verification Program worked together in developing a land-based protocol for evaluating full-scale commercial-ready ballast water treatment systems. The protocol development activity produced a working draft in 2004 resulting from the participation of an active stakeholder group, a technology panel that worked through specific problems in the protocol development, and a biological experts group that assisted in recommending or developing methods for organism enumeration and viability determinations. Pilot testing of the protocol was conducted during 2007 and 2008 using a full-scale ballast water treatment system at a newly developed facility operated by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Key West, Fl. In addition to testing both the fully automated ballast water technology testing facility and the ETV protocol, new techniques were developed at NRL to sample water and organisms from pipes under high flow conditions using computational fluid dynamics. New organism injection techniques for augmenting ambient population densities required for the tests were also developed, as well as enhanced staining procedures for determining organism viability after treatment. The current version of the Generic Protocol for the Verification of Ballast Water Treatment Technologies incorporates significant changes resulting from the pilot testing at NRL and other research efforts conducted in support of the protocol development. Verification testing of technologies under the ETV protocol is intended to produce a high quality standardized data package for review by the U.S. Coast Guard as part of the approval process for ballast water treatment technologies for shipboard use. The protocol is expected to be used at commercial ballast water technology testing and research facilities either currently operating or being developed for this purpose.
URLs/Downloads:
Generic Protocol for the Verification of Ballast Water Treatment TechnologyVerification Protocols, WQPC