Marine potential for Voraxial Separator
Following the announcement of the appointment of Maritime Solutions Inc as exclusive
distributor for EVTN in the marine market, I called Maritime to talk about the
background to the deal and the possibilities for the separator. This conversation
yielded some very interesting information regarding possible environmental benefits
of the use of the separator and how it is a UNIQUE product in this field at the moment
due to its unrivalled throughput. The text below has been collated from the
conversation.
Please assess for yourself the financial prospects to EVTN for this product. Read on!
Q: What is the background to Maritime Solutions?
A: Maritime Solutions Inc. was formed 2 years ago by Christopher Constantine and
Richard Fredricks, both with more than 30 years experience in the marine field.
Maritime seeks to identify "best of breed" products and introduce these into
the marine market.
Q: How did Maritime become involved with EVTN?
A: Maritime started looking into oil/water separators to provide a solution for
pollution control and investigated some 46 units. Only one unit, distributed by
CINC (www.cinc-co.com) was found to provide to be suitable for the full range of
possible oil/water separation requirements, however the operating throughput was
limited to 200 gallons/minute. Some friends introduced Maritime to EVTN and the
separator.
Q: What types of uses are there for separators in the marine market?
A: Separators can be used for a variety of purposes eg.
- Waterfront terminals, refineries
- Ship's liquid waste collection
Q: What benefits did Maritime see in the EVTN separator?
A: Maritime looked at many different units and saw the following areas of
superiority in the EVTN product:
- The EVTN separator is a simple and scalable design which can be built to handle large throughput volumes.
- The EVTN separator is clog-free so it can deal with suspended solids and objects.
- There is very little/no maintenance compared to a filter-based system.
Q: Are there any possible business drivers for the EVTN separator?
A: There are some major environmental issues being considered at the moment in the
area of cross-contamination of seas and lakes due to ship ballast discharge.
Ships loading ballast water (and organisms) at their origin can contaminate water
at their destination when they discharge their ballast water there.
Many incidents have come to light which possibly threaten marine life, [some
are documented in web links below] such as:
- Destruction of the Anchovy population of the Red Sea
- Introduction of european Zebra Mussels to the Great Lakes
Governments and international organisations (International Maritime Organisation,
UN) are looking at ways of preventing ecological threats to local environments.
The EVTN separator would be able to assist in the reduction of environmental
risk posed by ballast discharge by improving the purity of water taken on board.
Again only the EVTN separator can handle the 80,000 gallons/minute throughput
required for the largest vessels.
Q: What application(s) does Maritime see for the EVTN separator?
A: Maritime feel that while there are a range of possible marine separation applications
the ballast application is the most likely route to commercial development at the
moment in the marine field. It is in active discussions with various commercial and
governmental organisations at the present on this matter.
It is likely that the EVTN separator will need to be packaged as one stage of a
multi-stage separation process, using other methods to remove any remaining impurities
which the separator can't process.
Q: What are the possible financial benefits to EVTN?
A: Maritime felt it was too early to provide any figures for the type of revenue that
will derive to EVTN from separator sales since they are at an early stage in
the sales cycle and because it is likely the separator will form part of a packaged
solution, incorporating other functions eg filtration.
One system currently available in the market using hydrocyclones and using
ultra-violet treatment handling 16,000 gallons/minute is being marketed in the
$2 MILLION range.
Such a system would not be able to handle the throughput of up to 80,000 gallons/
minute required by larger ships, which the EVTN solution can.
How many ships are there out there that could benefit? A parts distributor currently
has over 40,000 ships listed on their records! If only a small % of these were fitted
with separation equipment the revenue to EVTN would be highly significant.
Q: What are the timescales involved?
A: The distributorship has just been established and there are no immediate sales
pending. Discussions are ongoing with governmental and maritime organisations
at present.
Other marine web links:
tech-trade.no
cinc-co.com
Some environmental links:
nemw.org
environment.gov.au
www2.nas.edu
infoseek.go.com
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