This is to verify the ongoing performance and discharge criteria of sewage treated systems on board ship.
While there are rules in place for verifying discharge parameters, these relate only to type approval testing in land-based establishments. There is currently no enforcement of the wastewater discharge criteria once a system has been installed and becomes operational on board.
ACO Marine managing director, Mark Beavis, said: “The main contention is that we believe there are type-approved systems in operation at sea that are scientifically incapable of treating sewage waste.”
A paper co-authored by Beavis – ‘Sewage Treatment with No-Sludge Production – A False Claim, and a Non-Conformity’ said: “Some manufacturers claim their sewage treatment plants do not produce sludge. Unfortunately, conformity assessment bodies have approved their equipment. But they have certified impossibilities and created certified ‘magic boxes’. These systems contravene science.”
Beavis said: “Sewage treatment plants protect the marine environment by turning raw sewage into less harmful effluent that meets specific discharge criteria set by the IMO. As a by-product of the treatment process sewage sludge is created that has to be either treated on board or incinerated ashore. This sludge is a by-product or all treatment processes. But instead of being separated from the treatment process, this sludge is being flushed out in the effluent.
“These ‘magic boxes’ would not be able to perform no matter how well they are operated and we are very concerned about the environmental damage these systems are causing,” he stressed.
While the rules were tightened by MEPC.227(64) and the use of dilution water limited during performance tests, this has not prevented the certification of these so-called sludge-free systems.
“Certificates have become licenses to pollute. Something is very wrong,” the authors said in the paper.
Existing guidelines do not explicitly prohibit no-sludge systems but the authors believe the type approval regime is a “contradiction to the IMO’s intentions”.
“There is a lot at stake: the credibility of the approval regimes, the liabilities to shipowners and yards, a level playing field, the IMO’s environmental aspirations and ultimately, the pristine marine water that we have agreed to protect,” the paper pointed out.
It was co-authored by Beavis; Dr Wei Chen, Future Program Development Manager, Wartsila Water Systems UK; Dr Elmar Dorgeloh, Manager Director, Development and Assessment Institute in Waste Water Technology at RWTH-Aachen University (PIA), Germany; Holger Hamann, Managing Director, Holger Hamann Consulting; Matthew MacGregor, Executive Director, TEi-Testing Services; Dr Daniel Todt, Project Manager R&D, Ecomotive; Niclas Karlsson, Managing Director, Clean Ship Scandinavia; Mark Mellinger, President, Headhunte; and Felix von Bredow, a Hamman board member.