Understanding Your Oil Waste

The treatment of oil slops and oil sludge is rarely boring.

What is sludge to one person is a slop to another and what is oil mud to one person is often cuttings to the next person. When an inquiry comes into our office for the treatment of oil waste, we have learned it is critical to make sure there is a shared agreed language on what type of waste we are dealing with.

Depending on the nature of the waste, the composition and the origin different outcomes can be achieved and a range of treatment options should be considered.

It is not uncommon for the oil sludge to be a mixture of different wastes. There can be heavy oil solids, clay or sand, water, oily emulsion and liquid oil. There is often a mixture of all of these and at times there will be separate areas in the pit or tank.

Often all of the waste is homogenised and then processed as one type of waste. In general this results in poor treatment outcomes and traps a lot of the recoverable oil in a sludge matrix. Not a good thing.

Before the treatment process is designed and implemented it is important to really understand the waste.

• How much of the waste is solids?

• How much free oil is there? And can we recover it?

• What is the water content?

• Is there previous treatment chemistry in the waste?

• Does the waste separate out under gravity?

• How does the waste respond when we expose it to chemistry?

• Can we mix the waste and treat the it successfully or should we treat the phases separately?

A short 2 – 3 day site visit and waste evaluation by SASES can prevent massive costs later in fixing unsuitable waste treatment processes. Really understanding your oil waste is what we do at SASES. We can come in, evaluate, assess and design the right process for your oil waste and your required outcomes.

Don’t bring us in to fix your process, bring us in first to create the right outcomes.

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Our goal is to support and empower you as our partner, in correctly and efficiently treating your oil waste. We put together a comparison sheet outlining the ways our SASES products work in oil waste treatment processes compared to other treatment methods like polymers for de-watering or thermal desorption and even stabilizing the waste. You will see some of the more obvious benefits as well as other elements you may not have considered when looking at our products. Discover them by downloading our comparison sheet.

Oil Waste Solutions - Achieving Net Zero Goals

Up to a year ago the carbon footprint of oil waste treatment was not a topic that had come up very often. At SAS we know this issue is going to become increasingly prominent. 

What is the carbon footprint of oil waste treatment and transport? Within the space of perhaps a year this changed from a minor question to an central issue that requires to be addressed consistently in many of the projects we are engaged in.

Over the past few months, the team here at SAS, have tried to shine some light on this topic and provide some tools you can use yourself. Tools that give you the opportunity to assess what the impact of net zero requirements will be on your business. 

There will be no hiding from the realities of the drive to net zero for our economy. This issue will not go away and the demands on the industry will only grow to show leadership and commitment. Governments will increasingly push for evidence of positive measures and evidenced positive impact.

 Your customers will increasingly make the carbon cost part of the assessment criteria in contract tenders. You need to know where your process, your business stands within this framework. You need to understand how you can positively contribute and how you and your business can thrive and lead in this changing landscape.

Not many of us ever gave thought to scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. Yet here we are. It’s time to start caring. We can help of course, here at SAS. Reach out to use if you want to get our thoughts on where you can move your business and your carbon impact.

Need help assessing your business and its progress towards Net Zero goals? Download our Business Net Zero Action Plan.

The SAS MIST in Suriname

Guyana and Suriname, together with French Guyana, form a small section on the northern part of South America. Since 2008 ExxonMobil and some other oil companies have looked for and found substantial amounts of oil. The arrival of the oil industry in Guyana and Suriname has led to the requirement of new environmental regulations and a whole new environmental infrastructure.

The governments have taken a strong line in ensuring high environmental standards and SAS Environmental Services is working with a number of partners in the region. One of our MIST systems is already on its way to the region in order to support the waste treatment and reduction.

The latest member of the SAS MIST family will taking on both drilling slops and production waste using our SlopTreat and SludgeTreat chemistry. It was essential to provide a low energy solution capable of treating large volumes of waste with a very low energy requirement. This keeps power consumption down and minimises the need to store hazardous waste for long periods of time.

The oil industry has the potential to help these economies to grow and at the same time responsibly manage any waste by minimising the waste creation and through fast and immediate treatment of oil waste.

To find out more about the MIST System and Process download our Product Data Sheet.

Model 2 : Disposal of Stabilized Oil Sludge

The Scenario

Let us imagine that we have 50 000 tonnes of liquid oil sludge in a storage somewhere and we must move this sludge about 600 km to the nearest disposal site that is willing to accept it. However, the disposal site will only accept it if it is a solid waste not as a liquid waste. There are several ways to proceed from here, but what is becoming increasingly relevant in today's world now is how much carbon footprint our treatment process incurs.

The Treatment Method

A method that is used to turn liquid sludge into a solid waste so that it is safer for disposal and accepted in more disposal sites is by stabilizing or fixing the waste. This is usually done by adding a stabilizing agent to the waste. The stabilizing agent obviously must be taken to the waste; it must be mixed at the site.  The stabilizing agent is usually a clay or perhaps sawdust, depending on the site location. This process increases the waste volume, but it does turn into a solid. Once solid, with no free liquid visible, the waste will have increased the total volume by a factor of three or four. This quantity then must be transported by truck to the disposal site, 600 km away, where it is safely and securely stored for eternity.

The SAS MIST Process

This is one way of doing it, but obviously, we are increasing the waste volume by a factor of three or four. It seems contra intuitive to create more waste just to treat the waste. Alternatively, what we can do is add a little bit of our SAS chemistry and put it through our SAS MIST process. What happens then is rather than adding stabilizers to the waste to turn it into a solid material, we actually remove the water and the oil, leaving only dry solids. The oil is recovered, and the water will be reused. We are left only with the dry solids that we then transport to the disposal site.

 The Advantage

That is a huge saving, rather than increasing the waste volume by 300% or 400 %. we are actually reducing the volume of the waste by about 90 % here, so the carbon footprint is going to be substantially smaller. In the case of this particular example, you're looking at over 20 000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions for stabilizing the waste and transporting it or you're looking at about 1400 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions for the SAS MIST process and only transporting a much smaller fraction of the waste. The impact on the carbon footprint by actually treating at the site of storage or generation is absolutely massive.

Your Benefit

How will this help you? By decreasing treatment costs, reducing long-term exposure, making your processes more efficient and staying ahead of your competition by being part of a progressive and sustainable route to Zero Carbon.

Download the Companion Factsheet to the video to find out more.

The Role of Carbon Offsetting on the road to Net Zero

Achieving Net Zero can deliver a range of business advantages– from demonstrating environmental credentials and building customer confidence in your brand, to improving staff engagement with your broader sustainability programmes. It can even deliver business growth opportunities – building resilience in supply chains, supporting growth in key markets and helping to launch new products and services. 

Companies are taking the lead by measuring, reducing and where necessary, offsetting their emissions. Some of the world’s biggest Oil & Gas Companies are taking the lead in making commitments to meet Net Zero targets. Is it about offsetting?

It is frequently stated that the road to Net Zero is one strewn with good intentions, or in this particular case, one of offset responsibilities. Many industrial processes cannot be replaced with carbon neutral methodologies. It is the case that once a full implementation of reduce, replace and manage is exhausted that the role of carbon offset becomes important. 

Can offsetting carbon emissions really tackle climate change? 

Offsetting alone is clearly not going to tackle climate change. It is simply a part of a planned strategy of carbon reduction.  But even in the best case scenario this transition will take time and in the meantime everyone will have a carbon footprint, regardless of how hard they try to reduce it.  Until we reach a zero-carbon world we need to do something about this unavoidable, residual carbon footprint. Paying to reduce an equivalent amount of carbon emissions through voluntary carbon offsetting is the most cost effective, fast and efficient way of doing this. 

Isn’t carbon offsetting is just a short term ‘stop gap measure’ for businesses to carry on emitting greenhouse gases, rather than address their carbon footprint? Businesses nearly always reduce first. In reality, nearly all businesses invest in reducing their in-house carbon footprint before considering a payment to offset what remains. Internal reduction activities frequently save money, while investing in carbon offsetting involves a financial outlay. Few businesses make this sort of investment without first getting their own house in order and being fully committed to operating sustainably. 

The alternative is doing nothing. Even if a business has done all it can to reduce its emissions it will still have a carbon footprint. Paying to offset them, is better for our environment than the alternative, which is to do nothing at all. Offsetting delivers real benefits for the environment and local communities. 

SAS MIST Process - how it helps with your waste, step-by-step.

Is carbon offsetting enough?

Offsetting is a first step in the right direction and meant to balance the scales. However, current governmental and social pressures push towards a more pro-active strategy in tackling CO2 emissions and tacking responsibility along the corporate chain. Offsetting an already reduced amount of emissions is better. To remain competitive, oil companies must demonstrate they have taken steps in transforming their operations to become as carbon neutral as possible.

SAS Environmental Services has taken this philosophy to heart. Using a combination of innovative chemistry, state-of-the-art engineering and over 40 years of cumulated experience in the industry, we help oil waste companies to reduce their oil waste through low energy processes.

Download our SAS MIST 220 to discover more.

Working towards Net Zero – a Sustainable Business Ambition

To future proof your organisation in today’s fast-changing world, you need to balance economic and environmental considerations to ensure responsible, ongoing success.  Therefore, oil waste companies must develop a continuous improvement program that encompasses the implementation of an energy strategy. 

Waste Management Plans are not new. They have directed robust management strategies of achieving environmental compliance with the least impact on costs.  As the need for the measurement of carbon footprint and mitigation of discharge of GHG emissions becomes commonplace, any waste management strategy must consider the release of GHG into the environment as a significant consideration.  

Governments are pushing their economies towards a range of net zero carbon goals. It is important and virtually unavoidable that companies in the energy and waste management sector step up and reduce their own carbon footprints AND assess how their products and services impact their clients’ carbon footprint.

But what does Net Zero mean?  Net zero simply means achieving a balance between GHG emissions produced and those removed from the atmosphere.

By building a carbon reduction plan that balances these economic and environmental considerations waste generating companies will be best placed to outperform their competition and drive long-term success. 

So, if you are looking to assess your organisation’s carbon foot print and create a plan to reduce it and explain to your client how you can help reduce their carbon foot print, how do you start? Where to begin? Well, we have put together a useful action plan template to help guide you through this process.

Download our Net Zero Action Plan to find out what steps you can take now to reduce your carbon footprint in operations.

What challenges do businesses face in the transition to zero carbon?

Transition to zero carbon will be an important business priority over the next years. Governments are activity setting a target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is expected to result in increasing legislation, as well as incentives, to ensure businesses play their part. 

Moving to a position of carbon neutrality is a significant undertaking, with many challenges facing businesses of all types. The desire to reduce carbon emissions is strong and continues to grow, as new generations enter the workforce and demand change. 

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Overcoming cost barriers

With increasing environmental pressures often come associated higher costs. The perceived burden of measuring, classifying and putting a programme of continuous improvement of Green House gas  (GHG) is an additional pressure on a company’s resources.

Change is always approached with apprehension and suspicion. However, with CHANGE comes OPPORTUNITY.

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At SAS ENVIRONMENTAL, we pride ourselves by providing innovative technical solutions to the treatment of wastes and recovery of valuable hydrocarbon resources. Our innovative technology is proven to recover typically 80% of oily volume and returning it to a useable form. This not only reduces residual waste volume and associated treatment and disposal costs; but provides the benefit of the value of the oil recovered.

SAS Environmental customers’ face the same challenges of reducing the discharge of oily waste by converting much of it to reusable resource.  In the months to come the requirement to measure and report material that contributes to the Carbon loading will become an increasing requirement and the incentive to Reduce, Reclaim, Recycle and Reuse will never have been more important.

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We now see that the benefits extend from not only reclaiming valuable resource but the equally valuable reduction in GHG emissions associated with conventional treatment and disposal.

This is no better illustrated by the processing of Oily waste at the INEOS site at Grangemouth.

As legislators embrace the needs for reporting of, and reduction of Carbon rich, oily wastes; increased emphasis will be placed on recovery of these ‘wastes’ and turning them into usable, commercially valuable resource.

Saving the planet, one step at a time.

If you have any waste treatment projects you're working on in oil waste then get in touch with us on any one of the many channels that are available. We would love to talk to you and see if we can help you, help the planet.

Find out more about oil sludge treatment in our Case Study by clicking below.

The chemicals to watch out for in Oil Waste Treatment

Ever feel that the oil waste being delivered to your site is not what you were told to expect? Yes, I thought so. You are not alone in this and that may or may not be a comfort to know. Oil slops and sludge come in a wide range of varieties and even from the same tank, mud pit or waste pit the consistency of the waste will often differ greatly.

We have worked with waste management companies since 2000 and we understand the day-to-day issues in running a process designed to treat one type of waste when in reality a whole range of liquids, watery slops, oily slops, heavy sludge and solids with a wee bit of oil appear. Always with the expectation the material will be treated with the same process.

With our SludgeTreat products our customers can broaden the range of waste types their process can treat. Our SludgeTreat products work on most oil slops and sludge waste and create a great separation between the oil, water and solids. If you use a decanter this is like adding a whole new capability to your equipment. Now the dial will go up to 11.

Simply by adding the SludgeTreat to the oil waste and mixing it this effect will take place. Mixing can be done inline through a static mixer or in a tank with good mixing capability. We can often make a customer’s process work just through circulating the waste with chemical through a pump.

If you have a tricanter for the treatment of oil waste this chemistry will allow the equipment to become substantially more effective. The reduction in viscosity of the sludge through our SludgeTreat products means better separation of the phases.

Use of SludgeTreat products also increases the effectiveness of the process simply by taking highly viscous sludge and reducing the viscosity.

What does this mean for you in reality? It means dry solids coming from your decanter or tricanter. It means high quality oil recovered for re-use or transport and it means water recovered.

More than anything it means you know that the next truck of oil waste arriving or the next tank you open or the next mud pit you take will get done on time. No drama. The SludgeTreat products give you that extra bit of Oomph!

We love solving oil waste issues and we would love to help solve your oil waste issues, challenges and opportunities.  

Discover our SAS SludgeTreat Product Range

Polymers vs. SAS Chemistry

Are you sure polymers are the best option for your oil sludge treatment operations? 

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is, “how are the SASES chemicals different from ploymers (flocking agents)?”

In this post, I’d like to provide a simple explanation as to how they’re different, and in doing so encourage you to ask yourself if polymers are the best option for your oil sludge treatment operations.

This explanation is designed for those with little knowledge of chemistry.  For those who are interested in the full technical explanation, please feel free to give us a call to discuss in more detail.   It’s an extremely interesting topic, but most lose interest after the first 30 seconds.

I’ll start by defining what I mean by the term “oil sludge & slops” and typically what our customers are trying to achieve through treatment.   “Oil sludge & slops” are typically waste streams with a high content of oil and solids, with water making up anywhere from 10% - 90% of the waste.  Typically, the objective when treating this type of waste is to recover the useable oil, clean the solids for disposal and clean the water, which is sent to a wastewater treatment facility.   Therefore, the goal is more oil recovery, cleaner solids and cleaner water. 

 Here are a few images of typical oil sludge and slops:

How are the chemistries different?

Polymer based chemistries (or flocking agents) are “grabbing” chemistries.  They are extremely effective at pulling particles together to form large cluster sizes.  In the case of oil sludge, which contain water, oil and solids, flocking agents pull the oil and solid particles together, leaving a clean water phase.  However, the downside of this type of chemistry is that you’re left with very tightly bound oil and solids, making it extremely difficult to remove the oil from the solids.  In most cases, the use of polymers in this type of application results in extremely difficult to treat oil-contaminated solids.  So, with polymers you get clean water, but very oily solids and you recover almost no oil.

The surfactant-based micro-emulsion developed by SASES is a “releasing” chemistry.  The chemistry is specifically designed to break the chemical bond that holds the oil to the solids.  This means that when the SASES chemistry comes in contact with the oil contaminated solids, the oil is released.  Once the oil is released from the solids, gravity does the rest of the work to separate the oil, water and solid phases – in some cases centrifugation is used to accelerate the separation process.    The advantage of this approach is that you’re left with a very clean solid, clean water and an extremely high quality oil that can be recovered and recycled/re-used or sold on the open market. 

Here is an image of the waste after being treated with the micro-emulsion:

Polymers are useful for water treatment as there is not a high proportion of solids and/or oil in this type of waste.   However, as the waste stops being a “contaminated water” or “oily water” and becomes a thicker oil sludge or slop, polymers often make the problem worse, instead of being part of the solution.  

Polymers absolutely have their place in the waste treatment industry.  However, there are definitely other types of chemistries that are more effective on the “thicker” more “oily” wastes. 

Find out more about micro-emulsion chemistry in our Whitepaper.

Oil Sludge, Malaysia and Me

An Amazing Country

I’d like to share a recent experience I had in Malaysia as an opportunity to introduce oil sludge from another source that we have not yet covered: the international shipping industry. 

Malaysia is one of my favourite places in the world. This country seems to have it all - beautiful countryside, tropical rainforest, beaches, history, friendly people and a unique blend of cultures. It also has a range of oil sludge waste sites scattered throughout the country that to date have been neglected. The sites have been expensive to clean up and the weak regulatory enforcement has created little motivation to take action.

Malaysia’s place in South East Asia and proximity to Singapore means there is a large volume of shipping waste coming ashore. Add to this the usual waste resulting from Malaysia’s growing oil & gas industry and you get a substantial puddle of oil slops and oil sludge.

 From my experience, this is the situation:

Oil Sludge in Malaysia - The Official Version

A medium sized container vessel will generate 7 tons of oil slop and sludge each day. Advances in technology mean that today some of this waste can be treated onboard the ships while at sea. Yet, large volumes of this bunker fuel sludge, Marpol waste and oil waste slops need to be off-loaded.

The oil sludge waste is stored onboard in waste tanks and off-loaded in ports like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and others. A lot of it is dredged out of the tanks off the coast, placed in 4-ton bags or skips and taken onshore by local waste management companies. The waste is then stored along the coast in a chain of waste management sites.

Oil Sludge in Malaysia - The Personal Version

On my last trip to Malaysia, I took a 3-hour drive through what appeared to be endless palm oil plantations (yes, the SAS products can also handle palm oil sludge), we eventually arrived at a rundown gate. Another short drive through the jungle and we came upon a clearing with a few small buildings, an oil waste site and some very shiny high tech equipment. The car parked right next to the waste site with heavy oil sludge. In this case the waste was bunker fuel sludge from the many containerships and tankers that pass the Malaysian coast travelling to and from China, USA and Europe.  A friendly security guard tied the two angry looking dogs guarding the site to a tree and waved me to come out of the car.

The site was fairly typical of the many oil waste sites that exist along the coast. These sites, either independently owned or part of larger organizations that own multiple sites, are increasingly looking to recover the oil. There is a transition in approach towards this Marpol waste and bunker sludge from waste treatment to oil recovery.

Much of the recovered oil, and even the untreated oil sludge is transported to China by a slew of Chinese freighters. By first recovering the oil, Malaysian companies are providing higher value and higher quality fuel. At the same time the level of waste is greatly reduced. This entire process is not so much driven by regulation as it is in Europe, but by an entrepreneurial spirit and simple economics. The oil is in the waste and the demand for the oil is there.

It’s this entrepreneurial approach you see everywhere in Malaysia that makes it such an exciting place to do business.  Making it economic to do the right thing by cleaning up the waste is precisely what we’re trying to achieve. We want to eliminate waste. One site at a time.

Discover our projects in Indonesia as well.

6 Top Techniques to Improve Your Oil Sludge Treatment Process

If you are a part of a waste treatment company dealing with oil contaminated slops and sludge, you have seen all types of wastes. There is probably a good chance that at one time or another you received a truckload of some especially tough waste that your existing process just could not crack.

We have all seen at least one of these wastes… maybe it is an especially tight emulsion, maybe it is highly viscous or maybe it was treated to death with a range of other chemicals that make it virtually impossible to crack.

When presented with these types of challenges there are 6 techniques we recommend trying:

1. Hit it with heat: If you are not currently using heat, it is always worth hitting the waste with a bit of heat if possible. This may be just enough to crack the emulsion. When testing if heat will help, we typically heat the waste to 70 c (158F).  

2. Give it a spin: If you are not currently using a centrifuge, it is worth seeing if a centrifuge might help. Oftentimes the extra force generated from a centrifuge can do the trick. When testing, we typically give the waste a spin in a bench top centrifuge at 3000rpm for 3 minutes.  

3. Try a new chemical: If you are using a polymer or an emulsion breaker and it is not delivering, it may be worth looking at different types of chemistry. All chemicals are not created equal. Every waste has a unique chemical makeup and a new chemical break what was previously un-breakable. If you are not using chemical, a quality emulsion breaker might be a game changer for your process. 

4. Dose it up… or down: If you are using a chemical in your treatment process and it is not delivering, you may want to try changing the dose rate. Importantly, it is not only about increasing the dose rate. In many cases, we found that decreasing the dose rate of the chemical (using less chemical) actually delivers a better result.

5. Change the waste: Sometimes by modifying the waste, it is possible to make it easier to treat. For example, if the solids loading is too high, adding some water before the treatment process may help. Or, for some wastes, adding other hydro-carbons, such as diesel, may help improve the treatability of the waste.  Or, mixing in a different waste stream might help. 

6. Mix-n-Match: We found that in many cases it is not any one approach that delivers the best solution. It may require a combination of the techniques outlined above.  

Whatever you do, we recommend taking a scientific and methodical approach. When you begin to map out the different possible combinations – heat/no heat, centrifuge/gravity, modifying the waste stream and the range of chemicals and dose rates for these chemicals – the number of different possible approaches rapidly grows to a level that seems unmanageable. This is why it is important to take a disciplined approach to testing.   

We believe there is a method for effectively treating any oil slop or sludge. The key is taking a scientific and methodical approach to finding the solution. 

To find out more about how SAS Environmental Services treats oil sludge download our Microemulsion Whitepaper by clicking below.

Oil Sludge Treatment in Scotland

Oil Sludge Challenges

Today we’re going to share with you a brilliant case study of work we carried out at the Ineos refinery in Grangemouth. The Ineos refinery in Grangemouth had about 20 000 tons of oil sludge in storage just outside Edinburgh in Scotland.

The problems were such that 20 000 tons of oil sludge with quite a bit of crude oil still in it was in storage. The only disposal option after a change in regulations was incineration, which had to take place just north of London, in England. That is a very long drive indeed and many trucks needed to move 20 000 tons of oil sludge south a very costly operations. There was a need to try and recover the valuable oil from this crude and reduce the amount of waste for disposal and ideally create waste for disposal that could go to landfill rather than incineration, so this was a fascinating project to get involved in.

Oil Sludge Treatment Design

What we did is we designed a process where we recovered dry solids through the supply of SAS SludgeTreat. What happened is we injected our SAS SludgeTreat chemistry and microemulsion chemistry into the oil sludge. This gets very quickly mixed in inline mixing system and it then goes through a decanter centrifuge inside the unit. The outcome is very dry solids which can go to landfill. The water can go to a wastewater treatment plant. The oil is then recovered and is of a good quality.

Successful Outcomes

This is what we did for 12 years and over the first 4 years alone doing the numbers on the work that we did together Ondeo industrial solutions and the Ineos refinery, we recovered some $4M worth of high quality crude oil through this process that went straight back in to the refining process so this oil was of  a very high standard.

We reduced the waste that had to go to disposal by over 80% that was basically the dry solids that we produced in the decanter. The process doesn't produce a wet sludge, but a very dry solid material and it didn't have to go to incineration, but it went straight to a landfill site. The waste disposal savings in transport landfill tax and disposal costs was $9M over a 4-year period using the SAS SludgeTreat and MIST process.

We played a very small part in keeping Scotland so amazingly beautiful. It's been a brilliant project to be involved in and we would love to get involved in more brilliant projects with you. We would love to create some new case studies that we can share with you so if you have any waste treatment problems, if you have any waste treatment projects you're working on in oil waste then get in touch with us on any one of the many channels that are available. We would love to talk to you and see if we can help you.

Find out more about oil sludge treatment in our Video Case Study by clicking below.

Keeping Canada Amazing - Oil Slops Treatment

A trip to Canada

This oil slops treatment case study from SAS Environmental Services takes us all the way to Alberta, Canada. I love Canada, it is one of my absolute favourite places in the whole world, for doing business there as well.

We were just outside Edmonton in an oil waste treatment facility and we were there for four weeks. This facility took in all sorts of liquid waste from oil field activities, from production activities, from drilling and exploration activities. All of it was liquid slops waste with small amounts of oil in it, some fines in it and some water in it.  What they tried to do there is basically separate out the solids. The solids would go to hazardous waste landfill sites and the recovered water they would try to re-inject.

Oil - Water - Solids

There was very little oil in the waste we were told, maybe between no oil at all and 2%, so they were not getting any oil out really, and they weren't expecting there to be an awful lot of oil to recover. We shipped a bunch of chemicals up and we shipped an inline static mixer with a chemical injection point that allowed us to inject chemistry directly into the floor line just before the decanter centrifuge that they already had installed. This worked really, really well, so after injecting about 0.75 % of our SAS SlopTreat 135SC product we got a fantastic split. The solids that were recovered were really dry coming out of the centrifuge. In fact, the solids were so good and of such high quality that instead of a hazardous landfill site all the solids that were produced in the trial ended up going to a non-hazardous landfill site, which was a massive saving. We were told that instead of about a 6-hour drive, it decreased to only a 30-minute drive to the landfill site.

We improved oil recovery from what was at best 2% and we got to 16% oil recovery. In fact, we recovered so much oil there wasn't enough storage for it and, of course, the value of that oil was very significant. The addition of the SAS chemistry also improved to decant the centrifuge throughput by 33%, which meant they could process more waste on a daily basis, and this worked really smoothly and easily.

The solids that we recovered from the process were really dry and the btex levels were down so far that under btex regulations instead of hazardous these solids could now be disposed of in a non-hazardous landfill site. Also, these solids didn’t need any solidifying or stabilizing with any other solids. They are just completely dry.

Keep Canada Amazing

So, we achieved a massive increase in oil recovery in this particular project, which was an absolute tremendous success as our customer put it. We did a little bit of keeping Canada amazing. It's a beautiful country and it feels really good to be a small part of making sure that Canada stays amazing just a fraction more.  

If you want to know more about this particular trial and if you want to know more about the SAS SlopTreat 135SC you can get in touch with us and we would be more than happy to answer your questions.

Canada - Oil Slops Treatment

Download Case study

SAS MIST - Waste Preparation Module

Where the Waste Module fits into the SAS MIST Process

I’m going to walk you through our MIST process waste preparation module. The MIST process uses our unique microemulsion chemistry to take oil sludge and oil slops waste and convert it into high quality oil water and dry solids that are safe for disposal. The whole MIST process basically runs as follows.:

The waste is in the tank, a pit or a lagoon. We remove it from the pit and we put it through the waste preparation module. We add the chemistry, we mix it, then we put the waste through the separation stage where we have a decanter – centrifuge, which removes the solids, the solids go to disposal, the centrate goes into a settling pond or tank and the oil and water simply face separate, the oil floats to the top, the water sinks to the bottom - that’s the MIST process.

What is the Waste Preparation Module

One question that kept appearing in my inbox was about the waste preparation module. What is that, why is that part of the system, how do I use it, and why are the people at SAS Environmental services so excited about this waste preparation module?

Basically it is a 20 foot container size frame. This waste preparation module adds a capability to our MIST process that was originally designed to treat liquid waste and adds the capability to treat waste with a much higher solids content or solid waste. Now you might have solid waste but it still has 20% hydrocarbons in it and you can’t put that waste through a decanter centrifuge. But with these two high-speed blending tanks what we can do is take that waste put it in one of these two tanks add our chemistry to it which helps break up the waste and helps to kind of liquefy it but then we can add oil to it or even water to it to create an oil sludge and that oil sludge is then processed through a separation stage leaving you with dry solids with virtually no oil on it no hydrocarbons on it and oil and water that you can recycle.

One solution, not three

So now, a typical waste pit is all over the place with regards to the nature of the waste. One part you may see liquid which is no doubt a lot of rain water that has come in and there’s probably some light hydrocarbons. There’s another part of the pit which is kind of black sludgy, which no doubt has oil and water in it but it’s pretty much solid already. Certainly the top layer and then closer to the front is much all the waste but it will still have 5% to 15% hydrocarbons on it.

Now you don’t really want to have three different systems to treat three different types of oil waste. We have one chemistry that will do it all but by adding this waste preparation module we can take this solid waste add oil to it or even water to it mix it in our waste preparation module and we can then still treat it through the decanter centrifuge we have at the separation stage giving you much drier solids free of hydrocarbons and the oil and water recovered. So this one module that we have, you can treat waste on one side, you can mix it, you can add a chemistry to it, you can add oil to it, you could add diesel to it, you could add another solvent to it, you can add water to it, you mix it, you get it ready, you get the solids content down to 15 to 20 % at most, and then while you do that the other tank where you have waste that’s already been prepped, that tank empties out into the decanter. That waste is being processed and once that tank has been processed you switch back to the other tank and so you have a continuous batch process and it allows your decanter to take on in your system, to take on a whole range of oil waste materials that it would normally not be able to treat and process.

So that’s why we think this is a brilliant system and why we think you should be excited about it too.

Find out more about the Waste Preparation Module from Mark Zwinderman in our Case Study Video.

Oil Waste Preparation - An Important Step in Treating your Liquid Waste

A Story of Ecuador Oil Waste…

Today, we want to share with you the importance of preparing your oil waste before applying your customized treatment. It is one of our key steps when designing a liquid waste solution. We’ll showcase its importance through one of our case studies. It concerns the delivery and commissioning of a SAS MIST 220 system for the treatment of oil sludge to a waste management company based in Ecuador.

From Solid to Liquid Waste…

This is a really fascinating project and this particular company had a number of waste issues that it wanted to address and opportunities that it wanted to capture. It involved both liquid waste from refinery operations, traditional sludge with a high oil content that could be recovered and solids which would be able to go to bioremediation at the site. At this site there was already a lot of bioremediation work being carried out of hydrocarbon contaminated land and soil. Some of that waste takes a very long time to bioremediate and that limits how much waste you can process through bioremediation. But if you can take waste that has relatively high hydrocarbons and put it through the system and using our chemistry and engineering to remove as much of the hydrocarbons as you can, then that opens up the capability of processing more waste on site and therefore growing your business.

The Importance of Blending…

In this case the system was designed both to take liquid waste, but it also had to take more solid waste. What we did in this case is we modified the waste before it actually went through the separation stage. Here we used two blending tanks that were built by a local design and engineering company. Those blending tanks allowed the customer to add oil or water to the solid waste to actually create a liquid waste. Then we put that liquid sludge through the SAS MIST system and using our chemistry, the result was very dry solids that can either go to a landfill or be further bioremediated. The liquid waste, the oil in the water would simply come out the other end and would be recovered.

Waste Evaluation Process…

The way we approached this case was to start off with a waste evaluation and process development stage where we really got to know the company that we worked with, the ways that they were looked to process and what their customer requirements were. Part of the process was to perform site surveys where we looked at what waste is on site, what is the layout, what is the nature of the waste. There was a lot of waste in this particular site and some of it had been there for a long time, going through bioremediation. We were really trying to do an assessment to see if some of this waste was quite liquid. We concluded that we could process it and other waste already far down the bioremediation route, for it there probably no point of putting it through the system.

In conclusion, it was just an evaluation of what there was on site and making sure that we knew exactly what we could do.Ultimately it came to the point where the system was about ready to be delivered and we worked with the team locally so that they were completely prepared for the arrival of our engineers and chemists and also of the MIST system itself. We got some excellent results with really dry solids, which we were expecting. And so, to get a really good meaningful outcome, it was a fantastic project to be involved in. If you have any questions contact us via email via telephone ,find us on Linkedin find us on Youtube ,leave a comment, ask a question and we will definitely, reply and get back to you as soon as we can and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to work with you as much as we enjoyed working with this particular project.

Thank you very much,

Mark Zwinderman |CEO

The guide to the SAS MIST - Step by Step

SAS MIST Process

Today I am going to walk you through the SAS Environmental Services MIST process. This is a process for the treatment of liquid oil waste such as mud slops, oil sludge, and refinery waste. Normally, this waste will be stored in a tank, in a pit, in a lagoon, or in a mud skip.

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 Waste Preparation

The first thing we need to do is prepare this waste for effective and proper treatment and make sure we achieve the best results possible. We use a pump, because this is a liquid waste that we are dealing with to pump the waste from the storage. The slops or sludge is pumped into our Waste Preparation Module. This is a dual blend tank setup based within a 20-foot frame. What those to blend tanks allow us to do is ensure that the waste goes into the Separation Stage in the best possible condition for treatment.

The variability of oil waste is enormous and the more we can standardize what goes into the treatment phase, the more successful we will be in the outcomes. These dual blend tanks allow us to do a few things that are very beneficial in the treatment of oil waste.

 First of all, if the waste is very high in solids, the blending tanks will allow us to reduce the solids content in the waste by adding some amount of water, oil or another solvent. This allows us to create waste with an overall lower solids content. This helps to improve the effectiveness of the decanter centrifuge at the separation stage. Also, there are times when we have very viscous waste, and adding a solvent can actually help reduce the viscosity. That in its own right can help at the separation stage when we want to remove the solids from the waste.

Innovative chemistry

The other thing we can do at the blending tanks stage is to add the SAS SludgeTreat products. This the chemistry that makes SAS-ES such a unique company. What the chemistry will do is start to work on the oil and the solids and begin to create that separation effect. We can do this inline right before the separation stage, but doing it at the waste preparation module stage gives us the opportunity to blend a little bit longer is needed. For example when the waste is particularly difficult, when there are as many different chemicals present in the waste, or when we have a higher solid loading.

The other benefit is that sometimes by blending chemistry and oil sludge for a longer period of time, it can actually reduce chemical dose rate a little bit. So, this is a very good capability to have in front of the separation stage. What it allows us to do by using those two blending tanks is that one blending tank is preparing the waste and mixing, the other blending tank is feeding the decanter. In effect, what we have enabled is a continuous batch process.

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The SAS MIST Engineering

The MIST system itself, the separation stage, has a pump which will pump the waste from the relevant blending tank. This waste will then be processed through the decanter centrifuge which forms the core of our MIST treatment stage. This decanter is very robust. It has been proven in the field for decades. It does a fantastic job, and because our chemistry is now so thoroughly mixed into the waste, what you get is very dry solids recovered. These solids will come out the side of the MIST unit through a discharge port, and the solids are disposed off in a skip or in a pit that is located next to the treatment system.

The MIST process produces very dry solids, so we do not get a wet sludge coming out the side. And of course, dry solids minimizes the amount of waste for disposal because all the liquid that you would normally get into this “wet solids” discharge would have to be paid for at the disposal site. By producing a really dry, nice, powdery sludge, you get a fantastic result because of the SAS SludgeTreat chemistry.

The other discharge coming out of the decanter centrifuge is the liquid centrate. This is a mixture of the oil and the water. The centrate is pumped from the decanter out of the MIST system. The centrate is placed into a storage tank. In the storage tank, because the system has removed virtually all of the solids and because the SAS SludgeTreat chemistry is present, the oil and the water are simply going to separate under gravity.

 The oil is going to float to the top. You can recover this oil. You can sell it. You can reuse it. You can run a generator of it. Sometimes, you might want to bring that oil back to the preparation stage and dilute heavy sludge if that is what you are treating, and on the other end, you will be recovering the water. The water can either be discharged to the surface, to a sewer, go to a wastewater treatment plant, undergo further cleaning or filtration, depending on where you are, what the regulations and your permits are.

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That, in a nutshell, is the MIST process. It is very effective. It is very robust. It handles virtually any type of liquid oil waste. If you want to know anything more and you have any questions, then do not hesitate to email us or give us a ring and get in touch with us. We would love to hear from you. Thank you.

Want to discover more? Listen to mark explain the SAS Process in the video below:

Solid, Liquid, what’s in a name.

We had worked on a number of projects where the nature of the waste was different from how it was described to us. Hazardous waste sample shipping is not always possible depending on the country of origin or the timeline involved. Sometimes we have go and visit the site and work locally. And at times what we find is a surprise.

The nature of oil waste is that the composition is rarely fixed. One pit will have solid waste, liquid waste and anything in between. Our job is to make the process and chemistry work on all of it.

Our MIST process is designed to separate liquid oil waste into solids, water and oil. At times we need to take waste that is high in solids (over 40%) and produce dry solids and remove any free liquids. The decanter will not safely process waste with such a high solids load. However, the SASES Waste Preparation Module is able to modify the waste using oil, water and/or the SAS SludgeTreat chemicals. This modification lowers the viscosity of the waste. By adding water or oil we reduce the overall solids content of the waste going into the decanter. The added oil and water is recovered at the end of the process.

This dual blend tank module enables the system to handle and treat virtually any type of oil waste and separate this into oil, water and solids.

Our project in Ecuador was a great example of our MIST system being augmented with this waste modification ability, providing the ability to the client to treat high solids waste and refinery oil sludge.

To find out more about hoe the SAS MIST performed in Ecuador, watch the video case study by clicking the button below.