Technical Department

OILY WATER SEPARATOR

An oily water separator (OWS) (marine) is a piece of equipment specific to the shipping or marine industry. It is used to separate oil and water mixtures into their separate components. This page refers exclusively to oily water separators aboard marine vessels. They are found on board ships where they are used to separate oil from oily waste water such as bilge water before the waste water is discharged into the environment. These discharges of waste water must comply with the requirements laid out in Marpol 73/78.

Bilge water is a near-unavoidable product of shipboard operations. Oil leaks from running machinery such as diesel generators, air compressors, and the main propulsion engine. Modern OWSs have alarms and automatic closure devices which are activated when the oil storage content of the waste water exceeds a certain limit.

SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT

Discarding sewage produced onboard on a ship is one of the few tasks on a ship which should be taken utmost care of if one wants to save him and his shipping company from heavy fine. The Sewage Treatment Plant on the ship cannot be stored on the ship for a very long time and it, for this reason, it has to be discharged into the sea.

Though sewage can be discharged into the sea, we cannot discharge it directly overboard as there are some regulations regarding discharging of sewage that needs to be followed. Sewage on the sea is generally the waste produced from toilets, urinals, and WC scuppers. The rules say that the sewage can be discharged into the seawater only after it is treated and the distance of the ship is 4 nautical miles from the nearest land.

But if the sewage is not treated this can be discharged 12 nautical miles away from the nearest land. Also, the discharged sewage should not produce any visible floating solids nor should it cause any discoloration of surrounding water. The details of the sewage discharge regulations can be found in MARPOL Annex IV.

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