ACO MARINE UNVEILS NEW RANGE OF ‘INTELLIGENT’ VACUUM TOILET SYSTEMS
Wastewater management specialist ACO Marine has unveiled a range of new vacuum toilets in a development that marks the company’s entry into this segment of the marine sanitation solutions market.
Introduced today, during Hamburg’s SMM 2018 Trade Fair, the AVT 100 and AVT 150 (Vacuum Toilet) series, the company’s first in-house designed and manufactured toilet, has been developed to provide ship operators and shipbuilders with a total wastewater management solution, from first use to discharge overboard.
With the new ACO AVT range, ACO Marine now has the complete marine sanitation package that includes vacuum and gravity-based toilets, vacuum generation, pumps, holding tanks, grease separators and membrane bioreactors through to pipework, scuppers, channels and waste stream transfer systems.
Commenting on the importance of the development, Mark Beavis, Managing Director, ACO Marine, said: “This new addition to the ACO Marine portfolio closes the sanitation loop as we can now provide a one-stop-shop service for all our customers’ shipboard sanitation and water management needs.
“With our own design we no longer have to source toilet systems from third-party suppliers and can pass on these savings to our customers, along with a vacuum toilet system that not only exceeds the market requirement but, I believe, sets the benchmark in cost effective and sophisticated toilet design.”
While the hydraulic variant – AVT 100 – is being marketed towards the commercial merchant ship market, due in part to its low cost and reduced maintenance proposition, the more sophisticated electronic version, AVT Smart100, has been designed to meet market demand from the passenger ship sector for a low-noise, “smart” toilet system capable of intelligent operation. The ACO AVT150 range is the super silent variant targeted at the luxury end of the market.
Compared to existing vacuum toilets, both the Smart and Hydraulic versions of the ACO design use different operating and control arrangements. For instance, each toilet has fewer components than competing systems, obviating the need for pneumatic valves – the component most prone to failure in traditional units. Instead, each AVT system operates a patent-protected self-closing/opening pressure valve for direct flushing.
It is the diagnostics function of the intelligent ACO AVT 100, however, that is expected to set the standard in passenger ship sanitation.
Incorporating a fully-programmable microchip in the control system, ship engineering teams can, for the first time, remotely control, monitor and maintain all the toilet’s functions.
Operators can adjust flushing and suction sequences, adjust water pressures and supply and monitor the condition of each toilet connected to vessel’s wastewater system. Typically, engineers would have to trace the system back to find which toilet had malfunctioned or wait for a passenger to report a problem.
Jiří Loníček, Head of Product Management, ACO Marine, explained: “For cruise and passenger ship operators, in particular, the ACO AVT Smart100 range offers a completely new dimension to system maintenance and operability, allowing operators to remotely adjust the parameters and flushing cycles of each individual toilet.
“This significantly improves maintenance schedules and reduces operational costs, since the smart technology automatically alerts the operator to which toilet on the network has malfunctioned and which component has failed. Ships’ crews can effect repairs immediately and before passengers get wind of a problem.”
The ACO AVT Smart100 variant is expected to be available for deliveries in mid-2019.
ACO Marine is the leading supplier of complete MEPC and ‘IMO Special Area’ compliant vacuum and gravity-based wastewater treatment systems to the all sectors of the global commercial and leisure marine markets. Its bespoke wastewater management solutions are manufactured in the European Union using only high-grade materials to treat all wastewater streams.
For more information, contact pr@seabornecomms.com