The Damen InvaSave ballast water treatment (BWT) system has won the Innovation in Port Equipment award at the inaugural IHS DPC Dredging and Port Construction Innovation Awards. These took place on the evening of the 10th of November in the Marriott Hotel in Mayfair, London. Damen InvaSave competed with four other finalists in its category to take the award, the company said in its press release.
The judges’ decision was based on the fact that: “InvaSave’ addresses a long neglected problem, where Damen saw a clear niche in the market. Ballast Water Treatment Systems will be mandatory from next year, but not all vessels will be ready - so having a portside unit that virtually any vessel can plug into, or having one on board, is a perfect, innovative solution!”
Matthijs Schuiten, Product Manager within Damen Green Solutions BV, received the award on behalf of Damen. “We are delighted to have won this prestigous award,” he said after the ceremony. “The timing could not be better with the IMO Water Ballast Management Convention now coming into force in September 2017. We believe that the Damen InvaSave will have an important role to play in the battle against invasive marine organisms and the damage they can do in waters that do not have the natural mechanisms to cope with them.”
The Damen InvaSave is designed to provide ports with a solution for incoming vessels that either do not have their own onboard BWT systems or have suffered some sort of system failure. With InvaSave technology, the ballast water only needs treating at the point of discharge, in contrast to most fixed onboard installations that also need to treat at intake. The InvaSave system can be supplied as a self-sufficient unit within a container. This can then be mounted on a barge or other platform so as to move around the harbour. Multiple units can be mounted in parallel to increase capacity.
The DPC Innovation Awards have been created to recognise and celebrate outstanding innovation and technological contributions made by the dredging and port construction industry. The winners in the 13 product categories were chosen by a panel of expert judges.