The Singapore Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) issued a report on a voluntary trial study conducted on onboard sampling and analysis of ballast water for D2 compliance.
In July 2014 the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) charged SGS Testing & Control Services Singapore Pte Ltd (SGS) with the execution of a study of on board sampling and analysis of ballast water for compliance testing within the frame of the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of the United Nations. The compliance tests were executed on in total six ships identified by MPA. It is important to consider that the outcome of this project as reported here was derived from and under specific conditions.
The ballast water sampling system allowed for on board sampling with conditions and sample volumes as close to the IMO regulations as possible. The analysis methods developed for use on board were also executed on board all six ships without major problems and without causing delays to the ships.
For the interpretation of analysis results, the uncertainty of the methods needs to be considered. For this reason, validation tests of the indicative methods developed by SGS were conducted by third party-laboratories. Using the results of these validation tests the uncertainty of the methods was calculated. These uncertainty calculations were used to determine the uncertainty range of the results of the ATP ≥50 and ATP ≥10 –
Since for the detailed analyses results were usually 0, no uncertainty calculations could be performed. The results of indicative and detailed methods did not always provide the same compliance statement.
The detailed analysis methods found one of the ships to be non-compliant while the indicative analysis methods found two ships to be non-compliant. The ship which was found to be non-compliant using detailed methods was also found to be non-compliant using the indicative methods. For the other four ships the results of the indicative analyses were all in the uncertainty range of the method and are therefore reported as ‘Possibly compliant’. The indicative methods did produce compliant results, but this is not reflected in table 1. Table 2 below provides a more extensive overview of the compliance results, divided not only between detailed and indicative but also between the organism categories ≥50 µm and ≥10 to
(Image Credit: MPA Singapore)
The indicative methods do not provide false positives for compliance. This matches the principle of ‘gross non-compliance’ for which indicative methods should be used. However, no limit values for gross non-compliance have so far been determined.
During the testing of ship 5 there was a problem with a contamination in one of the reagents. Improvements to the ATP analysis protocols were made to prevent these problems in the future and these protocols were used during the testing of ship 6, where the ATP analysis provided measurements below the D-2 limit values.
The two different detailed bacteria methods that were tested, the classic bacteria plating according to APHA protocols and the Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization method, provided very similar results for all ships and samples.
There is no D-2 limit value for total heterotrophic bacteria. The results for this parameter were compared with the limit value from the California standard (< 1,000 cfu/100 mL). Since this is not an IMO limit value exceeding it did not cause non-compliance
Compliance
One of the six ships tested was found to be non-compliant by both indicative and detailed methods, which means it was non-compliant with the D-2 standard. It is also to be noted that the ship which failed both the indicative and detailed analysis had retained the water inside the ballast tank for only 1 day. Furthermore the ballast water treatment equipment had to be stopped and started a couple of times during the sampling process due to some leakages in the control systems which needed attention. Furthermore, the same ballast water treatment equipment was tested onboard two other vessels for which the detailed analysis results were compliant.
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For more information please read the report included on the Shipping Circular issued by MPA Singapore.
Source: MPA Singapore
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