Ilona Bērziņa, BNN
The biggest wastewater treatment facility in the Baltic Sea region is located at Ventpils Sea Port, within the territory of Ventbunkers JSC. The point of it is complete treatment of tankers and industrial waste water from petrol products and other forms of pollution. Demand for such a service his very high among European businesses, says the head of the company’s wastewater treatment facility Jānis Legzdiņš.
The water treatment facility takes about 80 000 m2 of space. It treats industrial wastewater generated by Ventbunkers and Ventspils nafta LLC, as well as wastewater from tankers and wastewater generated by other companies. Among the active clients are Ventspils Freeport authority, multiple shipping agencies and other companies.
As Legzdiņš told BNN, there is a great deal of interest for this service among companies registered in other European member states. But in order to satisfy demand, it is necessary to increase the number of reservoirs and perform other investments.
“Of course, there are more modern and more advanced technologies than what we have, but they are very expensive – both installation and maintenance-wise. This whole time we have been investing into the facility’s reconstruction and improvement. This is why we can give the most attractive price in the Baltic Sea region.”
It is more economical for our clients to deliver water for treatment to Ventbunkers than to do it themselves.
“The facility can service more clients, but it will require more investments into development. For example, there are different new technologies that prevent aggressive and more polluted waters from accumulating in reservoirs and pipelines. We can deal with the existing volume at the moment, but we have to think about the future,” says Ventbunkers wastewater treatment facility manager.
Such wastewater treatment facilities are somewhat rare. In 1988 it was an experimental test project – there were only four petrol and oil containing water treatment facilities across the entire Soviet Union. In 1996 facilities were reconstructed and commissioned again.
The facility’s projected output is impressive – 8.2 million m3 a year or 65 700 m3 a day. But since 2002, when the European Commission adopted a regulation that banned single-hull tankers from sailing within EU waters, the volume of water to treat has gone down significantly. Currently Ventbunkers’ industrial water treatment facility’s declared output is 600 000 m3 a year or 12 000 m3 a day.
In our climate conditions tankers have to take in ballast water before entering port. This water is pumped into the same tanks that are used to carry petrol products. After entering port, tankers have to release this water and then pump in the necessary product. Until 2002 the majority of industrial water to be treated at Ventspils Sea Port came from single-hull tankers.
But when the Prestige tanker suffered a catastrophe near the coast of Spain in November 2002, causing an ecological disaster, the European Commission passed the aforementioned regulation. In July 2003 the European Parliament approved a plan to ban single-hull tankers. This banned single-hull tankers older than 23 years from sailing within EU’s waters.
Despite the drop in the volume of industrial water for treatment, Ventbunkers continued investing money into renovation of the facility and other activities to help improve operations. Since 2004 coal filter cleaning intensity has increased step by step. The technological process control system was improved; the automation system in three sewage sewerage stations to improve operational safety was modernised; damper electric drives to a modern type of electric drive were partially replaced. The company also performed the installation of automatic gas detectors for gas pollution control in explosive premises – sewage treatment halls.
Various improvements were added all the way until 2017. As a result,
to this day there haven’t been any cases when waters discharged into the Baltic Sea contained exceeded values of pollution.
Ventbunkers JSC operates following ISO standards. The company follows a closed cycle, and wastewater is treated to a degree that does not allow it to pollute the environment. Ventbunkers Water Testing Laboratory participates in wastewater cleansing process quality and efficiency evaluation. Water samples are taken before and after each treatment cycle and before water is released back into the sea. The facility also has a monitoring system in place. The State Environment Service also performs strict monitoring of the situation. Petrol products collected during the treatment process are then processed and sold.
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