Automated ballast water compliance testing:

The water sampler is developed in association with MicroWise and much more details can be found here: www.microwise.eu. Please forward all enquiries directly to sales@microwise.eu or by phone: +45 2267 8812. The water sampler is also avilable as an inline version having no valves.

The spread of invasive species in untreated ballast water is a major threat to marine biodiversity, marine industry, and human health. To counter this, the Ballast Water Management Convention requires all ships in international traffic to monitor and treat their ballast water before discharge. According to the IMO D2 and the US Coast Guard standards, ballast water discharge may contain no more than:

• 10 living organisms/m³ >50 μm
• 10 living organisms/ml in the size range 10-50 μm

Monitoring and maintaining compliance with the ballast water discharge standards requires reliable and rapid compliance testing equipment to ensure the function of the vessels' Ballast Water Management System (BWMS) and prevent operational delays due to non-compliance.

WHAT IS BALLASTWISE?
BallastWISE is the only automated solution capable of doing direct individual organism counts. Our patented technology improves ballast water compliance testing by combining the recognized method of manual microscopy with image analysis and size fractionation of individual organisms.

BallastWISE is a durable and portable compliance testing unit intended to monitor a variety of living organisms in the 10-50 μm and the >50 μm size class in samples from ballast water discharge or intake. Our test equipment measures all live organisms in these size classes, requiring no chemicals or lab skills. Just add water and get the results within minutes.

WHO CAN BALLASTWISE HELP?
BallastWISE is ideal for port state control, vessel operators, and for commissioning testing of Ballast Water Treatment Systems (BWTS).

HOW DOES IT WORK?
The BallastWISE methodology is based on automated motion detection of individual organisms and fluorescence from chlorophyll (Chla) content in individual organisms.

BallastWISE can analyze a sample of water and find:

• The number of organisms that are swimming
• The number of organisms containing chlorophyll
• The size of each individual organism

Organisms that contain chlorophyll and/or swim are alive with a high degree of certainty.

Optical assembly: BallastWISE uses industrial video cameras for directly viewing individual organisms in their respective size ranges of 10-50 µm and >50 µm. The magnification is 1x for the smaller fraction and 0,1x for the larger fraction, giving a depth of field of 0,7 mm and 20 mm, respectively.

Specifications:

• Weight: 6,4 kg
• Dimensions: 38 x 31 x 18 cm (l x h x w)
• Power requirements: 12 - 19 V (100 - 250 V mains adapter or from external computer battery bank), peak current 2 A
• Optical resolution: 2,4 µm (10 - 50 µm), 22 µm (> 50 µm)
• Organism sizes: Calculated for each individual as equivalent ellipse minor axis. Minimum detection width = 2x optical resolution.
• Velocity range: 0,024 - 0,6 mms-1 (10 - 50 µm), 0,22 - 22 mms-1 (> 50 µm)
• Sampling accuracy 10 - 50 µm: 10 ± 50 %, 20 ± 30 %, 30 ± 20 %, calculated per ml at 95 % confidence
• Sampling accuracy > 50 µm: 10 ± 30 %, 20 ± 25 %, 30 ± 20 %, calculated per l at 95 % confidence
• Max concentrations: 20,000 per unit volume (ml, l)
• Measurement time: 20-30 min
• Sample sizes: 400 mL 10-50 µm, 650 mL for >50 µm
• Chl a detection: Approx. 5 % of a single Tetraselmis suecica (reference organism) cell content (10 - 50 µm)
• Output: Video files (optional), tab-separated data files (position and size) for each organism at each point in time
• Reports: Final result counts with risk assessment, size distributions (optional), track plots (optional)
• Minimum computer requirements: 8 GB RAM, quad core CPU (PassMark CPU benchmark > 10,000), hard drive write speed > 120 MB/s (PassMark Hard Drive benchmark > 7,000)