Bilgecon from Alfa Laval is a complete bilge water conditioning system, which ensures that the oil content of the treated bilge water is less than 10 ppm before the water even enters the bilge water separator. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) stipulates that bilge water discharged from ships should contain no more than 15 ppm of oil. However, the equipment onboard ships for treating bilge water is often incapable of meeting this requirement.

Bilge water can be a complex chemical cocktail with a high oil content and often containing detergents. Interacting with the oil, these tend to form emulsions that are difficult to treat efficiently using only today’s bilge water separators. Bilgecon is an efficient, relatively low-cost system based on both traditional centrifugal separation and chemical separation. The system comprises two Alfa Laval subsystems working in series – an MSPX sludge treatment system for desludging and de-oiling, with an Alpacon dosing module, and a module-mounted OWC-101 oily water treatment system.
In both systems the oily sludge and the oily water, respectively, are dosed with Alpacon, a range of patented separation conditioners developed by Alfa Laval. These split up the emulsions, causing the oil and the sludge to separate effectively from the water.