Cutting Plastic Waste and Costs for Your Vessels
A short update and information sharing note for anyone interested in reducing plastic waste and costs from their vessels.
We’re doing several projects with managers who have now looked properly at the overall cost & reasons behind supplying plastic bottled water to their vessels.
The cost isn’t just the product: it’s the storage, the transport, the time, the occasional deviation, and the cost of disposal.
The reasons for supply have slowly crept upon us. In the ‘good old days’ we used to ‘re-mineralise’ the (almost free to make) distilled water produced from the Evaporator(s) – but this often doesn’t meet MLC safe drinking water standards or ‘taste expectations’ of crews (usually both!). Moreover, this stuff can only be produced when the main engine is in operation and providing sufficient waste heat. Trading patterns differ. Ships on regular coastal voyages, engaged in STS or floating storage seldom get the opportunity to ‘flash the Evap’. There are many vessels that don’t have enough steaming days far away enough from land to make the water they need – so end up buying in bottles or from bulk by barge. Worst still is the intermittent boiler flashing (just a couple of tonnes of fuel every now and then) – that (basis today’s VLSFO price) makes a 1m3 of water for over $200 – that makes the most expensive drinking water known to humankind (and usually tastes terrible).
Stonefort Marine works with ship managers and devises custom made capacity RO (reverse osmosis units) that produce drinking water (guaranteed to meet MLC standards) and technical water (suitable for low pressure boilers, <10 ppm NaCl) – and don’t depend upon other operational activities (free waste heat, vessel location, etc). These are uber low power consumers (think of a consumed energy of <8 kW/h for a typical commercial vessel with up to 30 persons on board). That equals <$1 for every 1m3 made. This same unit is small – weighing a total of 325 kgs on a single skid that can be fitted / integrated with ease. Better still…the product should be palatable on all fronts with staff onboard. Lastly, for anyone guaranteed the sun…we can power this baby with 10 standard sized panels. We provide turnkey solutions and fixed price service packages. Full payback is often less than a year and annual maintenance costs far less than a traditional Evap.
Please feel free to get in touch for a free consultation. It is not often that something comes up that makes economic as well as environmental sense.