Photo By Monica Mccoy | Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division Carderock Division Commanding Officer...... read more read more
Traveling across the globe from port to port, the U.S. Navy fleet transports Sailors and Marines, aircraft and supplies. But the ships also unintentionally transport small organisms to different bodies of water via ballast water. Most people would not look at small organisms like mitten crabs or zebra mussels and think they are a major threat to the environment – and in their natural habitats they pose no threat. But what happens when these organisms are introduced into a new ecosystem?
According to Rachel Jacobs, a chemical engineer in Waste Water Management Branch (Code 633) at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, the results of introducing non-native species into a new environment can be disastrous for the marine life that already inhabit that environment. These small creatures, as well as many other organisms, can be transported through a vessel’s intake and release of ballast water from one body of water to another.
Ballast water is taken in by a ship to maintain its position in the water using pumps. The ships stability depends on ballast water being taken in or discharged when cargo is loaded or unloaded, when the ship is traveling into different depths of water or, in the case of aircraft carriers, the carriers need extra stability for aircraft departures and landings.
From an environmental standpoint, the problem with ballast water is that it is a means to transport aquatic nuisance species. To address and study this issue for the Navy and its fleet, Carderock commissioned a brand new Ballast Water Research Laboratory Dec. 5.
Through the use of the new Ballast Water Research Lab, engineers at Carderock will be able to study ways to treat ballast water so that by the time ballast water is dumped at a ship’s final destination, those critters that lurk in the water will not be released to live and damage the ecosystem. The new lab gives engineers the capability of replicating the salinity of any body of water in the world. Jacobs is also looking forward to the addition of the nursery, which will give researchers the ability to grow and culture their own organisms.
“The issue of introducing non-indigenous species via ballast water has come more to the forefront internationally these days due to the incredible environmental and economic repercussions that have of occurred,” Jacobs said. “Ships can transport a lot of organisms in ballast water because what you’re doing is bringing in thousands – sometimes millions – of gallons of ballast water onto a ship, and you’re delivering them to a new locale when you go to your next port of call.
“It’s the sort of situation where you had power plants being horrendously impacted by zebra mussels; you had total biological ecosystems being devastated in California with mitten crabs; and in the Chesapeake Bay we’ve had the Rapa Whelk attacking oysters, which are one of the big economic drivers for Maryland and the watermen. Ballast water organisms transported by commercial and military ships have also been known to introduce diseases like Cholera to new populations.”
Jacobs, a graduate of the University of Maryland with degrees in chemical engineering and marine biology and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University, is a member of the team that facilitated the designing of the Ballast Water Research Lab.
“There’s been an incredible global push for years to reduce the introductions of aquatic nuisance species that has been headed up by the International Maritime Organization; and that’s how all these parameters got developed for ballast water treatment,” Jacobs said.
The Ballast Water Research Lab’s set-up spans two levels. Water is pumped from the salt-control tank and the sediment-control tanks on the ground floor to the mix tank on the mezzanine level. Eventually, the nursery tanks will be housed on the mezzanine level where organisms can be added in the mix tank and then fed into an evaluation system which will simulate a ballast water pump. Engineers can then test the status of the organisms in the mixture’s final stop in the sample tank on the ground floor.
“We are working with the Naval Architecture and Engineering Department (Code 80) with virtual Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to actually see how water flows within specific ballast tanks in specific ship classes. We will be able to take that and then turn that into physical scaled-models and test those models in the lab,” Jacobs said.
Carderock Director of Research Dr. Jack Price committed the funds for the laboratory – which was four years in the making – after a proposal modeled from a concept Jacobs and her team in Code 60 were able to come up with in just over 24 hours. The need and enthusiasm for such a lab was evident, Price said.
“There was a lot of research that was involved in doing the CFD calculations by our hydrodynamics people in Code 80. There’s also all the parts that Code 60 was bringing to bare in the knowledge of the types of species you’re going to want to deal with, what their densities are, sizes and weights, etc. So it’s a complicated problem, and I think we built a unique lab to appropriately simulate that,” Price said.
“With the fact the lab consists of lightweight nalgene, or plastic tanks, you can set the lab up in new configurations if you have to so you can simulate the different configurations you might encounter in different ship classes. That makes it an easy module-type approach so that we can do good, accurate testing,” added Price.
The Carderock Technical Director Dr. Tim Arcano and Commanding Officer Capt. Mark Vandroff commissioned the Ballast Water Research Lab in a ribbon-cutting ceremony by pouring water from the Chesapeake Bay into one of tanks.
“I am extremely proud to have a Ballast Water Research Lab here at Carderock because this is good for the environment,” Vandroff said. “With our ships going all over the world, we have to be able to comply with such environmental demands or we’re not going to have the access we need to fulfill our mission. The addition of this lab is really going to enhance our fleet.”
The Navy continues to take measures to protect the environment and meet the standards of harbors all over the world. According to Rita Schuh, an environment engineer in Code 633, the new Ballast Water Research Lab will provide them with the tools necessary to continue to study and innovate ways of treating ballast water and meeting various port regulations so that the Navy can continue to be granted access.
“Unlike major commercial transport ships that have dedicated transit lanes, the U.S. Navy goes all over the ocean,” Schuh said. “Navy vessels are not always going to be in the same kind of water in the same part of the world and are not held to the same limitations. So we need to be able to ballast everywhere – in all conditions, all salinities, and all temperatures. It is important to find a really robust treatment of ballast water that doesn’t limit our operations.”
According to Schuh, ballast water is not currently treated with external technologies; the total volume of ballast water is exchanged in the ballast tanks removing only some of the aquatic nuisance species. The new lab will help to study methods of removing more organisms in the tanks in order to comply with international regulations. Schuh and Jacobs pointed out that different treatment options have been tested in the past, but the goal is to come up with a way to ensure that absolutely no live organisms are being dumped into bodies of water to interfere with the ecosystem of native species.
“Ultraviolet radiation (UV) is one set of treatment technology that has been tested, although there have been issues in terms of how effective it is at killing the organisms versus deactivating. The whole point of UV is to basically inactivate the DNA in the organism so it’s unable to replicate. It’s not an official kill as compared to an inactivation, but then we have to figure out how to test for that,” Jacobs said. “There are other treatment technologies in terms of chlorine dioxide and deoxygenation and all sorts of different things that have the potentiality for use in Navy systems.”
Jacobs and Schuh said they are glad to have a lab like the Ballast Water Research Lab that provides them the versatility to do proper testing of ballast water solutions, and they are enthusiastic about the opportunity to do their part to help the Navy continue its mission while protecting the environment by solving the problems associated with the transport of ballast water.
| Date Taken: | 12.13.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 02.23.2017 15:05 |
| Story ID: | 224535 |
| Location: | WEST BETHESDA, MD, US |
| Web Views: | 87 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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