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www.sea-technology.com March 2015 / st 61 Shearwater Buoy Monitors Hong Kong Reservoir Euro Tech (Far East) Ltd. (Hong Kong, China) has purchased a special- ized 1.2-meter Shearwater buoy from Ocean Scientifc International Ltd. (OSIL), based in Havant, England, for installation in the High Island reservoir in Hong Kong. The robust buoy hull is constructed from rotationally molded polyethyl- ene, which is foam flled for added security, with a galvanized steel cen- tral structure, allowing the passage of instrumentation and cables through the water column, while offering pro- tection for the instrumentation during deployment and operation. The internal electronics canister for this particular system houses a Camp- bell Scientifc (Logan, Utah) CR1000 data logger and GPRS modem for data transmission, and a separate canister holds two 33-ampere-hour batteries. A stainless-steel top frame accom- modates three 36-watt solar panels, together with a 6-decibel antenna, 1-nautical mile navigation light, and radar refector. The 50-meter mooring has been designed by OSIL to accom- modate two Hydrolab DS5X sondes, one at 5 meters depth and one at 15 meters depth. The sondes are measur- ing parameters such as DO, pH, tur- bidity and chlorophyll. The reservoir forms an essential part of the drinking water supply for Hong Kong. AMTs Recover Survey Data From North Sea Sensors High-speed acoustic modem tech- nology from Sonardyne International Ltd. (Yateley, England) has been used by Shell (The Hague, Netherlands) to successfully recover survey data from a network of long-life seabed sensors deployed in the North Sea. To date, the network of Autono- mous Monitoring Transponders (AMTs) has collected more than a quarter of a billion measurements as part of a six- year uninterrupted production moni- toring study. The AMTs were originally deployed in 2010 to meet Shell's re- search and production monitoring requirements. Every few hours, each AMT within the feld-wide network wakes up to gather readings from a va- riety of inbuilt sensors, including pres- sure, range, temperature, pitch, roll and sound velocity. The measurements are logged and time-stamped and can be recovered on demand from the sur- face using a Sonardyne 6G High-Pow- er Transceiver (HPT) acoustic telemetry modem. For this latest data harvesting cam- paign, the Norwegian fshing vessel MV Elisabeth was chartered and a tem- porary over-the-side deployment pole installed. To this, engineers ftted the HPT modem to gather data from each AMT in the network. Queen Mary 2 Gets New Wastewater Treatment System One of the world's major cruise ships, the Queen Mary 2, is being ft- ted with a Wärtsilä (Helsinki, Finland) advanced wastewater treatment sys- tem. This installation will enable the vessel to fully comply with the IMO's requirements concerning the preven- tion of pollution from ships. The Wärtsilä Hamworthy Mem- brane BioReactor (MBR) solutions are designed to facilitate the management and treatment of both gray and black wastewater, and to monitor discharges to the sea. The MBR system is an ad- vanced wastewater treatment process based on biological degradation and membrane separation. The 2,620-passenger-capacity Queen Mary 2 entered service in 2004 and was designed with the aim of reducing the vessel's impact on the environment through more effcient management of waste. The existing on- board system is now due for replace- ment, and two Wärtsilä Hamworthy MBR 16 systems have been selected to maintain the ship's high environmental standards. The Queen Mary 2 is powered by four Wärtsilä main engines. International Survey to Assess Fish Stocks The RV Cefas Endeavour com- menced an 18-day charter to the gov- ernment of the Netherlands organiza- tions Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) and the Institute for Marine Resources & Eco- system Studies (IMARES), with local mobilization in Scheveningen, Neth- erlands. The 74-meter, multidisciplinary research vessel will participate in In- ternational Bottom Trawl Survey op- erations in the North Sea in collabora- tion with vessels from other European agencies, under the auspices of the In- ternational Council for the Exploration of the Sea. The objective of the survey is to collect data for the assessment of fsh stocks (e.g., cod and plaice) and to investigate changes in the ecosystem. CROE SO 2 Scrubber For MV Seagard CR Ocean Engineering (CROE), based in Parsippany, New Jersey, an- nounced an order from Bore Ltd. (Helsinki, Finland) for one of CROE's exhaust gas cleaning systems, or scrub- bers. The system will use seawater to re- duce sulphur dioxide emissions (SO 2 ) from the main engine of Bore's MV Seagard Ro-Ro container vessel. The system is scheduled to be online in late spring 2015. Once installed, the system will al- low the vessel to meet the low-sulphur ECA requirements, even when burn- ing high-sulphur heavy oil. The CROE design has special features that will allow the ship to reduce stack sulphur emissions, even when operating in the lowest alkalinity/salinity waters of the eastern Baltic. Effective January 2015, all ships that operate in the North American and Eu- ropean ECAs are required to switch to 1 percent sulphur fuel or install scrub- bers to meet the equivalency standard for SO 2 . As an alternate, IMO has al- lowed ship owners to install scrubbing systems as an equivalent to fuel switch- ing. The small dimensions of the CROE scrubbing system make it suitable for newbuilds or as a retroft to existing ships. The system is designed to re- place the existing silencers and does not require a bypass. The system can be applied to cruise ships, ferries, bulk carriers, containerships, RoRo and other vessels. CROE offers the scrub- bing system as open loop (a once- through scrubber using seawater to reduce SO 2 ), closed loop (a recircu- lating scrubber design that utilizes an aqueous solution to reduce SO 2 ), or a combination of both designs called hybrid. n environmental monitoring