TT Talk - November 2024: Ballast water management

Ballast has been used to maintain stability and seaworthiness of cargo ships dating back to timber-hulled sailing ships and their use of solid ballast. Water as ballast was widely introduced in the use of metal-hulled steam powered ships, where water carried to generate steam could also be used as ballast to trim and maintain stability of the ship. Today’s modern large cargo ships can have a ballast capacity in excess of 5,000m3 or 5,000 tons of water. Unfortunately, this widespread and efficient practice often has an unintended consequence...