Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2024 15 W A S T E M A N A G E M E N T NAVIGATING SUSTAINABLE MARINE TRANSPORTATION NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR BRANCH able high-level indication of some of the changes. I mentioned before that discharge of oil is prohibited in the polar area. So not just 15 parts per million, it's zero. And then there's a series of restrictions as well on black water or sewage discharge, Gar- bage too. All of this basically makes it a zero-pollution zone when you're actually operating in the Arctic. And that makes it very challenging in a submarine because you are generating waste. So, what do you do? You've seen some of the technology that could potentially be used to treat some of those streams of waste that we gener- ate. But you also see the requirement issue which is 0 ppm discharge of oily water. If you can only get it down to 5, that means you are going to have to carry oily water around on your boat which will have a very significant impact on design. If the inten- tion is to be fully compliant to what these regulations stipulate then I think that's a choice that you really have to make. The reality is, is that we're gonna take a MOTS design and try to modify it as least as possible in order to get this boat into service for 2035. So you've gotta look at the process of how to go through that and minimize the impact. From an engineering and naval archi- tecture point of view the first thing that I would want to do is establish exactly what the requirement is. And I have to say right now after having looked at the rules and regulations, there is a certain amount of fuzziness in there. And there's a certain amount of latitude for interpretation. And that's unfortunate. Because it means that, you know, you're going to present a pro- posal and then somebody's going to argue with you. And that is going to lose you time in your schedule, which as far as I'm concerned is what's really driving this over- all project. But once that requirement is es- tablished, then you're really looking at the weight and volume of whatever that waste is that you're having to store onboard your boat or process and the equipment that you're going to need to incorporate into it to be able to address that stuff. You also then must look at the second- ary effects. What's the power requirement? What's the noise, what's the shock? There's a whole series of areas there, and really look- ing at it from a systems engineering point of view. Two things I haven't heard men- tioned today. One of them is the impact on the trim and compensating system. So, if you are going to be operating and you're having to basically put all these wastes into a tank or store them on board as you gen- erate them, your boat's getting heavier and heavier. And that's not a good thing for a submarine. It needs to be neutrally buoy- ant. So, you need to have sufficient volume in your trim and compensating system to be able to lose the weight from the boat as you're generating additional waste on board. It's not as simple as saying, "I've got to store 10 tons of sewage during the three weeks that I'm operating north of 60. I've also got to have 10 tons on board initially that I'm getting rid of to keep my boat bal- anced." You don't just have a 10-ton prob- lem, you got a 20-ton problem. This is the last point that I am going to make today. We've really kind of looked at waste and waste disposal from a regulatory and engineering perspective, but what we haven't done is we really haven't looked at it from a tactical point of view. When you are processing waste on board, the machinery is going to be generating some sort of noise signature, and if you are discharging the waste, you are also going to be creating some sort of signature as well. That's the exact opposite of what you want to do. You want to be a stealth platform. You don't want to be a hole in the water. So, when you are looking at processing the waste and storage of the waste you need to be very, very cautious about how you are going to incorporate these changes into the boat so that you don't damage the existing signature of the platform. Now, it could be an opportunity in some instances to improve the signature. Because perhaps you do wind up with a system that will process the waste. You don't have to discharge it at all. So instead of having to blow the black water tank every 12 hours, maybe you only have to do it every three weeks. So, there may be a way around it by looking at this sort of technology. Anyways, that, that's the end of my chat. Thank you very much for this opportunity. LUC CASSIVI: Thank you very much. That was a great panel. Thank you for your brilliant effort to make a subject glitzier than it would appear initially.

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