What is best practice handling bilge water?

Best practice in bilge water handling always starts with skimming free oil off the surface. All bilge water separator manufacturers recommend skimming the top layer inside the bilge settling tank. Traditionally this has been conducted via penetrations at different levels in the tank. All of us with seagoing experience know that this is not effective at all. Since the level in the tank is constantly changing and the penetrations are fixed at one side the skimming effect will be very small. It is also time consuming and since the result is so poor the engine crew have far more important tasks to see to. The result of this is that little or no skimming of the top layer is ever taking place, which is not good for the overall efficiency of the vessel. It is also against best practice!

The solution to this problem is the Sludge Buoy™ System. Sludge Buoy™ is developed to take care of all the above mentioned problems. As indicated above; all bilge water separator manufacturers are recommending skimming of the top layer from free oil. It is not good if the free oil enters the bilge separator. It will cause a shut-down and expensive replacement and disposal of filter media or absorption filters.

Sludge Buoy™ does not require any certificates and is easily installed by the ships own crew during normal inspection or cleaning of the tank. No maintenance is required on the Sludge Buoy™. Annually or semi annually the flexible hose will need to be changed and this is recommended to be done at the same time the tank anyway is opened for inspection or cleaning. Several big cruise lines have installed Sludge Buoy™ fleetwide.

If you are in the process to improve or invest in new bilge water treatment equipment, we recommend you to look into the benefit of installing a Sludge Buoy™ in the settling tank in order to enhance the performance of existing or new equipment. If you want to know more about best practices in bilge water handling, just contact us.

The best thing with Sludge Buoy™ is that it does not compete with any manufacturers of bilge water separators. On the other hand all bilge water separator units will benefit from having a Sludge Buoy™ installed onboard since their efficiency will be better with less oil fed into the units.

This is the reason why we say that good bilge water management starts with a Sludge Buoy. For your vessel it will start to save money! Contact us for references.

Get inspiration from "The Sludge Buoy film". Send us an e-mail and we will post you the 7 minutes long DVD, filmed inside a bilge water tank.