40% Cruise Ships Use Outdated Sewage Treatment Plants

ACO Marine Managing Director Mark Beavis “The FOE report paints a contrasting picture to the environmentally conscientious one offered by the cruise lines themselves”

ACO Marine has welcomed the findings reported in the Friends of the Earth 2016 Cruise Ship Report Card, the annual survey of cruise shipping’s impact on the environment, which highlights a growing need for the sector to update its sewage treatment technology. The annual FOE survey, published in June, documented the environmental footprint of 17 cruise lines and 171 cruise ships, finding that a significant proportion of vessels continue to operate out-dated sewage treatment plant.The FOE found that 40% of cruiseships continue to use 35-year-old technology, calling for an urgent upgrade to systems capable of preventing environmental damage from the discharge of poorly treated black, grey and galley waste water streams.“The FOE report paints a contrasting picture to the environmentally conscientious one offered by the cruise lines themselves,” said Mark Beavis, Managing Director of ACO Marine. “That 40% of cruiseships are still using wastewater treatment technology developed in the 1980s suggests that some of these cruiseships are unable to meet current regulatory requirements. Certainly some of these vessels will be incapable of meeting the more stringent requirements set out in MEPC.227 (64), which limits the amount of phosphorous and nitrogen discharged in treated effluent.”Beavis added: “With an increasing trend for expedition-type cruising in ecologically sensitive areas, it is paramount to environmental conservation that the cruise sector adopts wastewater technology capable of helping to prevent the nitrification of our seas.”While Friends of the Earth continues to push the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to update its sewage treatment standards under the Clean Water Act, the environmental campaigner noted that an average cruiseship with 3,000 passengers and crew produces about 21,000 gallons of sewage and about 150,000 gallons of grey water each day.Marcie Keever, oceans and vessels program director for Friends of the Earth, stated in a June press release: “With the Northwest Passage now open in the summer due to climate change, the cruise industry’s expanding itineraries will bring increasingly damaging pollution to even more sensitive areas like the Arctic. It’s way past time to set a higher bar for this industry.”Of the 17 cruise lines FOE assessed for the 2016 report, seven were ‘A’ graded according to four environmental criteria: sewage treatment plant, air pollution reduction, water quality compliance and transparency. Seven were given grades ranging from C- to F.

Soureced by Ekomeri.com

The post 40% Cruise Ships Use Outdated Sewage Treatment Plants appeared first on Shipbuilding Equipment and materials - HOSEUNG Ent Co., Ltd.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2cbzsqD
via IFTTT

Riding waves of changes on Yangtze

The Yangtze river that Nie Bo sails on today is by no means the same river he saw years ago.

“I’ve watched the river 320 days a year for 28 years. Her changes are beyond my imagination,” Nie said, steering a cargo vessel through a busy waterway full of giant ships.

The Yangtze, China’s longest river, is at the center of an economic belt entrusted to offset China’s economic downturn. It is now a cargo artery linking the wealthy coast and the vast inland, but a decade ago the seasoned captain says plying the river had been a dangerous venture.

“When we neared Chongqing (a metropolis in upper reach of Yangtze), I would press my ear on the deck to hear the riverbed pebbles rubbing the ship’s bottom,” Nie said.

That was around 2000, when the river had much fewer ships than today. Back then, its upper reach was off-limits to big vessels for being too narrow and shallow, while its many winding and turbulent stretches were called “ghost gates” that are life-threatening for smaller boats, according to Nie.

In 2003, the Three Gorges Dam, located on the upper middle-reaches of the Yangtze, opened its ship lock, ushering in the era of colossal ships. The dam greatly improved the navigation on the river by lifting water levels on the upper reach and releasing storage of rainy-season flood waters to supply the middle-lower reaches during the dry season.

“I used to steer small ships several hundred tons at most, now I wouldn’t even call a 3,000-ton ship a big ship,” Nie said.

The growing ship size is also a result of greater demands for river transportation after China made the Yangtze River economic belt a national strategy in 2014 to boost concerted development in riverside provinces and municipalities.

“There are many more ships on the river thanks to the economic belt. My ships now carry everything from fertilizers and ores to manufactured goods,” Nie said. Orders from transportation companies continue flying in, securing for him a monthly income of 13,000 yuan (2,300 U.S. dollars).

According to the dam’s administration, as many as 150 cargo ships, carrying 300,000 tonnes of goods, passed through the ship lock every day in 2015, more than eight times of that in 2003. In more recent years, the dam saw building materials and goods of high added value, including cars, make up a larger proportion of the cargo.

CHANGING SCENERY

Booming river transportation also brought rapid changes for regions on the riverside. “There used to be few bridges on the river, I could easily recite their names. Now the city of Wuhan alone has more bridges on the Yangtze than the river’s total in the past,” Nie said.

He Jiayong, a longtime cruise liner captain, also noted better riverside scenery thanks to fast urbanization.

“The riverside cities used to be dark at night and villages had many mud-brick houses. Now the cities are all ablaze with light, and the village huts are all made of bricks,” said He, also a deputy general manager of a cruise liner company based in Wuhan, central Hubei Province.

Also gone is the common sight of trash floating on the river, as China improves its water pollution monitoring. All cruise ships under He’s management have been ordered to install sewage treatment facilities and can no longer discharge waste into the river, as they did before.

His customers are changing too. Before the turn of the century, there were mostly Western faces on Yangtze cruise liners, as such trips were unfamiliar and over-priced for domestic vocation goers.

“Now Chinese tourists have turned the table and make up 70 percent of all passengers on Yangtze cruise liners,” He said.

That also explains why the sinking of the Eastern Star cruise ship, which left 422 dead last year, dealt a hefty blow to his company by driving away many domestic guests. The industry is in recovery, though, and He has confidence on the river and China’s tourism. “The water will not stop flowing.”

Sourced by ekomeri.com

The post Riding waves of changes on Yangtze appeared first on Shipbuilding Equipment and materials - HOSEUNG Ent Co., Ltd.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1S7pERe
via IFTTT

Using Tankers for Municipal Waste Water Disposal

 

Can municipal sewage be transported to irrigate the desert?

Management Professor C. K. Prahalad authored a treatise in which he explored new business opportunities that result from the convergence of technologies, a concept based on lateral thinking and one where it is possible to envisage tankers being used to deliver municipal waste to new forms of desert agriculture.

The combination of the carrying capacity of large tanker ships, the location of deserts and the location of cities dumping raw sewage into rivers and the ocean, as well the evolving need to transport water internationally, presents a possible new business opportunity based on simultaneously solving several problems.

Dumping Raw Sewage

Last December environmentalists in Montreal, Canada expressed outrage as a result of the need to dump several million liters of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River. A similar uproar occurred in Cape Town, South Africa as a result of 50 million liters per day of sewage being released into the ocean. On the west coast of the Americas, cities such as Victoria, Canada and Santiago, Chile dump raw sewage into the ocean. At all such locations, evidence of the sewage can be seen in the form of slicks on the seawater and the hue of waves.

At the present day, a tanker ship carries potable water from Southern France to Israel. In some arid regions, water can actually sell at a higher price than the equivalent volume of combustible liquid fuel. Such a scenario enhances the viability of pipelines, tanker railway trains and tanker ships carrying potable water. Except that, in some nations like Canada, environmentalists and people who adhere to a strong nationalist sentiment vehemently oppose the export of water – even while some of their cities dump raw sewage into the waterways.

Proximity of Deserts

A look at an atlas that shows climatic regions of the world also reveals that many cities that dump sewage into the ocean are located in the same general regions as deserts that extend to the coast. Part of the Namib and Kalahari Deserts extend to the coast to the north of Cape Town. The Atacama Desert stretches along South America’s Pacific Coast in close proximity to Lima, Peru, and Santiago, Chile. California’s drought-stricken agricultural region is located close to the coast and several major coastal cities from Vancouver to San Diego.

Deserts extend to the coast in Australia, the Arabian Peninsula and Northern Africa, with several ports located on the edge of deserts internationally. Oil pipelines cross over the Arabian Desert, suggesting scope to adapt the pipeline technology to carry water from a coastal location to inland desert locations.

At locations where large tanker ships are too deep to berth at a port, an offshore terminal could facilitate the unloading of sewage from ship to pipeline. The size of modern tanker ships would allow them to moor at a port for several days, filling to 85 percent of their volume.

Desert Agriculture

Several innovations have recently occurred in India with regard to desert agriculture and using underground disposal of raw sewage as a means of sustaining the growth of food bearing plants.

Minimal annual rainfall in an arid region prompted a community leader to introduce innovative water collection techniques along with underground storage and distribution of water. The region grows crops that require minimal water and exports produce to other large cities. In another region, water collection, storage and distribution into homes flushes sewage into underground tanks that feed and sustain plants that bear tropical fruit.

In several regions, China uses sewage from cities to sustain agricultural production of food crops. Israel has been a pioneer in desert agriculture as well as underground water storage and distribution to plants.

A range of proven technologies can carry sewage from coastal cities to ports at the edge of deserts. From there, pipelines could carry the sewage inland to be distributed through underground pipes to supply commercial crops. Supersize tanker ships and possibly oceanic tanker trains can carry massive volumes of sewage at low cost from cities to desert ports.

Climate, Energy and Rainfall

A variety of geographic and weather factors result in different climatic regions occurring in close proximity to each other. Very recently, the installation of offshore and coastal wind turbines along the west coast of the U.K. resulted in the production of coastal fog, the result of the wind turbines actually cooling the airstream moving inland off the Irish Sea. That precedent can be applied at many locations internationally where humid winds blow off the sea and up a coastal mountain, where wind turbines could cool the incoming airstream to produce fog at high elevations and possibly increase rainfall.

The future development of technology capable of initiating and sustaining offshore waterspouts could also increase the volume of moisture that winds carry to high elevations along coastal mountains. Communities in some regions have installed fog fences in coastal mountains to harvest water directly from incoming fog and mist.

Large cities located near coastal mountains could benefit from the additional rainfall as their future population expands. They would produce greater future volumes of raw sewage that tanker ships would carry to coastal desert regions where agriculture has been developed, perhaps to grow some of the food that the cities would consume.

The tanker ship segment of the maritime industry could come to play a significant role in the combination of future sewage disposal and future food production. Many proven technologies and ideas can connect municipal sewage disposal to desert agriculture. While the short-term cost to initiate such activity may be high, the long-term cost may be sufficiently competitive to entice private sector interests to investigate future long-term business prospects collecting sewage from cities to sustain agricultural production at a desert location

The Original Posted by By Harry Valentine/The maritime Executive

The post Using Tankers for Municipal Waste Water Disposal appeared first on Shipbuilding Equipment and materials - HOSEUNG Ent Co., Ltd.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1ULQcpW
via IFTTT

sewage treatment plant : Will cruises hit Luggage Point blockage?

Brisbane’s largest sewage plant with 12 waste storage ponds is only 200 metres away from where the city’s proposed $100 million new cruise ship terminal would be built at Luggage Point by 2019.

Fairfax Media went to Luggage Point to investigate the site after learning Queensland Urban Utilities and the Port of Brisbane have begun talks on ways to reduce odours from the waste plant.

Today it is a veritable abandoned sandy wasteland 30 minutes from the CBD and looks like the perfect place to dump a body. What it will look like in 2019 is open for debate.

Two of the world’s leading cruise ship companies; Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruises lines have joined a market-led pitch with the Port of Brisbane to build a new cruise ship terminal at Luggage Point.

That would allow Brisbane to take advantage of mega-cruise ships and burgeoning cruise ship tourism in Australia. The trio are now vying to win the support of the state government.

But any international tourist who arrived yesterday would be shocked at how run down the Luggage Point area of Brisbane appears.

Luckily, if it gets government support, the proponents have until 2019 to build it, seriously improve the below-par roads and get rid of abandoned car bodies, blocks of concrete, derelict houses and add some lights and direction signs.

The first view some international guests would get of a typical “tin and timber” Queensland would be a selection of derelict timber treasures from Atlas House removals.

Sydney Harbour it isn’t. Darling Harbour neither.

However contrary to first impressions, Luggage Point doesn’t smell badly.

The area smells like a hardware shop that sells fertiliser. That is not surprising given it is close to BP Bulwer Island oil plant and across the Brisbane River from the city’s main cargo handling centre. And it’s not overpowering.

The area’s local councillor is David MacLachlan. Cr McLachlan says he has had no complaints about smells from the Queensland Urban Utilities Luggage Point plant 100 metres away.

“This site is removed from residential areas and no complaints have been made to office about odours at this site,” Cr McLachlan said.

“Any odour concerns would need to be addressed by the Port of Brisbane and the State Government, who are delivering this project.”

They would have to deal with this issue when there are 4000 passenger arriving per mega-liner.

The Port of Brisbane says it is talking to Queensland Urban Utilities about the perception problem, but did not explain how they would counter the problem.

“Luggage Point is the only viable location that is supported by the cruise operators and meets the specific technical requirements to accommodate vessels of more than 270m,” a spokesman said.

“We will use Stage 2 of the market-led proposal process to conduct a range of environmental and technical assessments with a view to resolving any potential concerns,” the statement reads.

“Our business case to Government will include plans to address any amenity issues. We are working collaboratively with QUU and other site neighbours to assess options and confirm their requirements and those of the cruise facility.”

On Monday Port of Brisbane chief executive Roy Cummins would not speculate on what he thought was the most pressing environmental issue facing the potential cruise ship port.

“We will do the detailed environmental and technical studies and that includes the amenity issues associated with the location,” he said.

Queensland Urban Utilities also did not answer how the two projects could sit side by side, but issued a short statement.

“We’re working closely with Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd to assist them in the next stage of their proposal, which will involve detailed technical investigations to ensure any development issues are addressed,” a spokesperson said.

“Luggage Point Sewage Treatment Plant is a world class facility that treats waste water to the highest standard. It’s one of Brisbane’s most important pieces of infrastructure, treating 60 per cent of the city’s sewage.”

In the meantime, while the road to the city’s potential $100 million cruise ship terminal may be called Main Beach Road; it is a long way from being either a “main road”, or leading to “a beach.”

The Luggage Point wastewater plant sits beside the Luggage Point recycled water plant, which opened in 2009 and has the ability to provide 70 megalitres of “recycled water” to Wivenhoe Dam’s drinking water supplies.

 

The Original Posted by Tony Moore/brisbanetimes

The post sewage treatment plant : Will cruises hit Luggage Point blockage? appeared first on Shipbuilding Equipment and materials - HOSEUNG Ent Co., Ltd.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1MB24Vg
via IFTTT

Huvis Water wins $20 mn contract to build water treatment facilities in Vietnam

Huvis Water wins $20 mn contract to build water treatment facilities in Vietnam

South Korea’s Huvis Water Corp. secured a $20 million contract to build industrial water supply and waste water treatment facilities for a dyeing industrial park that is under construction in Tay Ninh province in southern Vietnam, the company announced on Monday. The construction is to be completed in 18 months.

The construction of the dyeing industrial complex sitting on a 2 million square meter site in Vietnam is led by TMTC Industrial Zone Development Co., which is a Vietnamese subsidiary of Korean shoes manufacturer Taekwang Industrial Co.

Under the agreement, Huvis Water will build a facility that could handle 20,000 cubic meters of waste water daily and a water supply facility that could handle 19,000 cubic meters of industrial water per day.

Huvis Water expects it could win the second phase of the water treatment project for the industrial park in Vietnam that will include the construction of a water treatment facility as well as minor facility maintenance and operation services. The company plans to put out efforts to make inroads into the overseas industrial water treatment market including Vietnam and China, said Shin In-yool, chief executive officer and president of the company.

Separately, the Korean water treatment firm set up a local subsidiary in Vietnam on Jan. 19 to expand its presence in Vietnam with high growth potential. Huvis Water also plans to participate in a Vietnamese government-led project bid.

Sourced by ekomeri.com

Slovenian Villages Connect To Mains Sewage Treatment

Slovenian Villages Connect To Mains Sewage Treatment

●WPL supplies packaged treatment plant for three villages
●EU funding finances sewerage and treatment systems
●Robust technology key to rural infrastructure

Mains sewage treatment is being brought to three villages in Slovenia for the first time with the help of a packaged treatment plant manufactured in the UK.

Hampshire-based WPL has been selected to produce the custom-made plant for the villages of Zdenska Vas, Mala Vas and Cesta in an EU-funded project.

Three High Performance Aerated Filter (HiPAF) units operating as a single treatment system at Zdenska Vas will be connected to a new mains sewerage system, ending the reliance of the villagers on septic tanks.

Central European Sales Manager Frantisek Mikulinec of WPL said: “In countries such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic there are thousands of small remote villages and many are not connected to a sewerage system. In small villages you can have very big fluctuation in flows throughout the day when people go to work. Also temperatures in winter can fall to as low as -15oC.

“The advantage of the HiPAF is that it can accommodate fluctuations in flow and temperature variations because submerged aerated filter (SAF) systems like the HiPAF adapt to loading changes more quickly than activated sludge flocs. Intensive nitrification can occur even when the temperature is low due to biofilm thickness.”

European funding
Approximately 70 per cent of the funding for the project comes from the European Union Cohesion Fund – which supports infrastructure projects. A further 30 per cent comes from the local government, which appoints the designer for the new sewerage systems.

Work on the Zdenska Vas and Mala Vas projects has been completed with work in Cesta expected to take place in early March 2016.

Mikulinec said strong local connections helped the UK company secure the contract as well as the proven reliability of the core process. WPL has more than 20 years experience of manufacturing packaged plants. The company specialises in custom-made plants which can treat to the highest environmental standards, including sub-1mg per litre ammoniacal nitrogen and total nitrogen (TON) where required.

“The great advantage of the WPL HiPAF system is that it is a very robust and reliable process, which is what you need in these smaller villages.

“WPL has a very close working relationship with Grosupje, a Slovenian water utility and the contractor for this job. In Slovenia WPL works with distributor F3M Levstek, which is very well known and well respected company.”

Low maintenance
Each HiPAF unit has a treatment capacity of 235 population equivalent. They will be fitted below ground in order to withstand the freezing temperatures in winter. A shared walk-in kiosk will house blowers, manifolds and control panels for all three plants.

The HiPAF system uses a combination of fixed-film and biomass reactions and is capable of achieving even the most stringent environmental standards. The tanks are fitted with a forward-feed system which lowers the level inside the tank during periods of low flow in order to create a balancing volume during surges.

WPL packaged plants are designed to be easy to maintain and if necessary each diffuser can be removed for maintenance without the need to shut down the plant.

Ongoing research
In order to maximise efficiency once the systems are fully operational WPL will compare influent, effluent and energy use from each village in an ongoing research project headed by sales manager Frantisek Mikulinec. The findings will then be used to adjust the process to make sure each unit is working as smoothly as possible.

He said: “The challenge with these sort of projects is to ensure we come up with exactly what has been specified by the designer of the new sewerage system appointed by the local authority. Because WPL specialises in custom-made packaged plants we are able to adapt our basic design to ensure it meets the requirements of the client.

Sourced by ekomeri.com

Daegu City Signs JV Deal with Chinese Firms for Wastewater Treatment Business

Daegu City Signs JV Deal with Chinese Firms for Wastewater Treatment Business

The Daegu metropolitan city government will move into the wastewater treatment business in China by establishing a joint venture among Chinese and Korean companies and a Chinese local government. The city government said on December 14 that a signing ceremony for the 400-million-yuan (US$62-million) joint venture was held on the same day in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, with Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin, president of the Daegu Environmental Corp., Yixing Industrial Park for Environmental Science & Technology director Zhu Xufeng, and others were in attendance.

The partners to the 49:51 joint venture include the Daegu Environmental Corp., EnbioCons Co. from Korea and the Yixing Industrial Park and Jiangsu Philip Environment Engineering Co. from China. Beginning from January this year with the launch of the much-strengthened new environmental law, a market of 8 trillion yuan ($1.24 billion) is likely to be created by 2020. A Daegu city government official explained, “This is a whole new approach in which a local autonomous body works with Chinese local government and corporate partners.”

EnbioCons is a company specialized in waste treatment and recycling, with a technology to turn wastewater sludge into solid fuel. It will receive about 100 million yuan ($15.5 million) for technology licensing fee separately from the latest deal. The Yixing Industrial Park is directly under the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Science and Technology. Philip Environment Engineering, established in 1999, is specialized inwastewater treatment  and has five affiliates under its wings.

 Sourced by ekomeri.com