Evaluation of ballast water treatment systems from the perspective of expert seafarers' ship experiences

Until recently, the selection of ballast water treatment (BWT) systems was based on a predetermined set of criteria that did not include evaluations for system utilization due to lack of experience. The experience-building phase for the systems began, especially with the entry of the Ballast Water Management Convention into force. For effective assessment and decision-making, the evaluations of expert seafarers responsible for using ballast water treatment systems on-board ships are of paramount importance. This study was completed by evaluating the experience and evaluations of 50 expert seafarers (24 deck personnel and 26 engine personnel) working in a Turkish maritime company in three phases to contribute to the decision-making and system evaluation processes: 1- The failure reports written by the ship personnel of the maritime company were examined, and bilateral interviews with expert seafarers working on these tankers were held; 2- an online questionnaire was prepared and presented to seafarers; 3Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to obtain a common perspective of the seafarers. In this study's first phase, 'ideal system characteristics' were determined. Based on these characteristics, an online questionnaire was prepared in the second phase of this study and presented to seafarers. In the third phase, a set of six criteria was developed, and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to obtain the common perspective of 50 participants. Pairwise comparisons revealed that ‘Rare alarms and malfunctions’ was the most important criterion from the perspective of all seafarers and UV-type BWTSs were 1.76 times more preferable than the electrochemical (El-Chem) type BWTSs as a common approach.