The BOSOWS is a Secondary Oily Water Separator, building on principles not yet used separation of marine oily bilge water. Its advantages are that it is insensitive to the ships motions and vibrations, reliable, requires less maintenance, employs no expensive and annoying filters, chemicals etc., and is easy to operate. Further, it exploits the engines cooling water for heating and seawater for cooling, and operates and cleans automatically.
A working prototype was built on board a Norwegian Offshore Supply vessel, producing 300 litres of clean water per day.
The Phase 1 Working Package for the BOSOWS included the following tasks:
Task 1: Construction of a BOSOWS Prototype with a capacity of 1 m3 per day.
Task 2: Laboratory tests.
Task 3: Technical Manual
Task 4: Technical Test Report
Task 5: Business Plan
Task 6: Patent and Freedom to Operate examination.
Task 1 has been completed. However, the test runs on the full-scale prototype revealed unforeseen difficulties. Hence, much time and efforts went on to find and test solutions to the difficulties, ending up in major changes to the prototype including the original working principles. The changed principles solved the said difficulties, however at the cost of other complexities, including increasing the energy required for cleaning and increasing the cost of production. Further, the changed principles require the development of a new cleaning process for the separator. This development is not finished yet. Task 2-4 have hence not been finalized yet, due to the complications from the changes made. The work on the Business Plan is approx. 80% finished, but cannot be finalized before Task 1 - 4 are finished. Our analysis in the Business Plan confirm the business potential for an Oily Water Separator with the intended properties of the BOSOWS, if production cost when full production scale is achieved can reach the originally anticipated cost level. Task 6 is finalized. No patent has been obtained on the BOSOWS, and the Freedom to Operate examination has so far revealed US patents on similar principles. However, the Freedom to Operate examination did not include the new principles for the BOSOWS. Hence, if the project continues based on the new principles, a new Freedom to Operate examination will have to be undertaken.
