After many months of review and many years of testing, NEI Treatment Systems’ Venturi Oxygen StrippingTM (VOS) ballast
water treatment system has been issued a Type Approval Certificate of Ballast Water Management System. The Certification was issued by the Liberian Register, with technical review by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS). Land-based biological testing was conducted by the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL) of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Shipboard trials were conducted by a team of scientists from CBL and the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, a
U.S. Federal Government Laboratory. The testing was funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of the U.S. Ballast Water Technology Demonstration
Program.
In 2004, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) finalized the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments, which will eventually require most internationally-trading vessels to treat ballast water to prevent the transfer of harmful aquatic organisms.