Introduction

Oil tankers carry different types of oil cargo in their cargo tanks and it often happens that after discharging the oil cargo in some port, the ship sails without any cargo to some other destination.

In order to do so, it has to take ballast from the sea to get better draught and stability. For this reason, ballast water is taken into cargo tanks wherein generally oil cargo would have been carried.

It is to note that the ballast water carried in cargo tanks has to be discharged out at sea before the next cargo loading.

Therefore, an Oil Discharge monitoring and control system (ODMCS) is used to prevent the pollution of the ocean by oil due to the discharge from ballast and bilge spaces.