A proposal to select the most efficient and environmentally safe hydrocyclone to treat ballast water from ship hulls

Nowadays seas and oceans are exposed to serious threats such as land-based sources of marine pollution, the overexploitation of living marine resources, the physical alteration or destruction of the marine habitat and the horizontal transfer of marine species to new environments in ballast water. When marine species are introduced into new environments and the living conditions there are favorable to their reproduction, they may compete with native species and have economic and/or ecological impacts on the host environments and eventually cause severe human health problems. In order to prevent this kind of pollution, new maritime regulations have been introduced (Gollasch et al., 2007) which consist of a primary treatment to eliminate suspended solids and a secondary treatment to exterminate microorganisms. The ballast water problem is caused by the introduction of invasive marine species into new environments by a ships’ ballast water. A combination of methodologies including mass balance, granulometric analysis and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is applied here to optimize (in terms of environmental sustainability) the system for treating ballast water. The purpose of this system is to minimize maritime pollution so that the direct environmental impact is very low or even positive.