Great Ships Initiative

Land-Based High Flow Test Facility

The GSI's land-based testing of treatment systems takes place at a purpose-built test facility located in Superior, Wisconsin during the late-spring, summer and early fall seasons. Key features of the test facility include:

- Infrastructure compatible with IMO guidelines for land-based testing for treatment certification;

- A freshwater estuary with plentiful aquatic life as the water/organism source;

- The option to conduct either in-line or in-tank sampling and/or spiking;

- Capacity to run controlled experiments on treatment systems at 200 to 341 m3/hour;

- A common intake stream that is split into control and treatment tracks for simultaneous filling of matched treatment and control retention tanks;

- Capacity to retain water in two pairs of matched control and treatment retention tanks each roughly 200 m3 in volume;

- Ability to treat test water upon intake and discharge;

- Ability to transfer water from one pair of matched treatment and control retention tanks to a second pair of tanks to allow retention and evaluation of post-discharge treatment water; and

- Ability to discharge to a tank truck if further water treatment is required.

GSI Land-Based Facility in Superior, Wisconsin.

Laboratory space within the University of Wisconsin-Superior and University of Minnesota-Duluth is utilized to meet GSI bench-scale test objectives, as well as for non-time sensitive analysis of samples from the land-based and shipboard scale tests.

A mobile field laboratory and stationary structure provide on-site bench-scale facilities to support land-based atests. The laboratory, pictured below, is located at the land-based test site during the testing season and can be moved to other sites in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System to support GSI shipboard tests as needed. Both the mobile laboratory and stationary structure are climate-controlled, and have enough desk and counter space to allow for simultaneous microscopic and analytical analysis of zooplankton, phytoplankton and bacteria samples.

Shipboard in-situ testing of treatment equipment will be undertaken to "ship-truth" technology performance exhibited at the land-based scale. The platforms available to the GSI comprise ships in two distinct trades: Canadian Lakers and transoceanic vessels. A Canadian Laker, plying routine voyages between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Western Great Lakes, can be used to determine if the treatment technologies perform as anticipated in actual shipboard conditions in both fresh and saltwater. Ocean-going vessels in saltwater trade can be used for tests of treatments at the most advanced stages of development to determine if the systems perform as anticipated in actual shipboard conditions in locations globally.