PRESS RELEASE: Chelsea Technologies Group (CTG), a world leader in the design and manufacture of sensors for the maritime sector, has today announced that its portable FastBallast compliance monitor has been selected by the Canadian government for trials in a four-month ballast water monitoring programme.
The study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada will conduct onboard testing of ballast water between July and October this year to ensure vessels are compliant and there is an accurate and reliable portable ballast water testing capability in place. The programme is being managed by the Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Science, and will assess portable ballast water monitoring technology in providing an accurate, rapid assessment of ballast water to prove compliance with the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC).
CTG’s FastBallast is the only compliance monitor to use a statistical method to generate an estimate of cell density that is independent of an assumed level of fluorescence per cell, in order to achieve the most accurate reading. FastBallast conducts sampling based on the Poisson distribution theory which ensures a true analysis of the ballast water sample, and is also used by the Great Lakes Laboratory in its methodology. FastBallast provides a pass/fail response in under 10 minutes, and is the only technology capable of operating in a flow-through mode, while providing a high degree of accuracy with a representative report on discharge compliance.
FastBallast’s unique capability uses the single-turnover method, rather than the PAM multiple-turnover method, which provides a much lower detection limit (< 1 cell per mL) as the 20mL sample size avoids sampling problems at low cell densities. It is capable of determining the phytoplankton cell density of ballast water to IMO D2 & USCG Discharge Standards (10 to 50 µm range), with an equal degree of confidence as laboratory analysis.
