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.

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

Case Study: Offshore Supply Vessel Cleaning

A service company, based in the Gulf of Mexico, that provides dockside cleaning of offshore supply vessels (OSV) used 5 bbl of SAS PitClean 102C product to clean 4 x 600 bbl tanks in 4 hours and recover over $15,000 worth of oil. 

The Problem:

The OSV had been decommissioned due to extensive clogging of the gun-lines from previous attempts to lance the vessel using competing cleaning products. The service company's client was extremely anxious to get their vessel back in service as soon as possible, fully cleaned with all trace of drilling fluid and mud removed.

The OSV was configured with 4 x 600 bbl mud tanks shipping synthetic based mud. Up to 24" of packed barite was found on the bottom of tank #1, overlaid with approximately 40 bbl of pump-able mud. Tanks #2, #3 and #4 contained up to 6" of packed solids each with approximately 20 bbl of pump-able mud above the settled barite.

The SAS Solution:

The service company used SAS PitClean 102C to unclog the lines and clean the OSV to specification in a fraction of the time it would normally have taken. 

The following is the process they used:

• Recyclable mud was pumped from the tanks

• Gun-lines were lanced manually

• A 7.5% concentration wash pill was prepared by diluting 3 bbl of SAS PitClean 102C with 40 bbl of water and left to mix for 5 minutes

• The wash pill was pumped into tank #1 and circulated through gun lines for 45 minutes to complete the unclogging of the 24" of packed barite that was begun with the initial lancing

• Waste from this cleaning cycle was pumped from tank #1 to a recycling/settling unit to separate solids and liquid

• The recovered liquid phase containing viable recycled wash fluid was pumped into tank #2 which had 6" of packed barite

• A further 1 bbl of SAS PitClean 102C was added to the recycled wash fluid and run through the gun-lines

• The above described process was repeated of tank #3 and #4

To Sum Up...

• 5 bbl of the SAS-ES product was enough to clean all 4 tanks, removing all drilling fluid and mud within 4 hours total job time

• 130 bbl of viable mud was recovered post recycling with a value of $15,000

Case Study: Offshore Mud Pit Cleaning - Brazil

For a period of 4 years SAS Environmental Services supplied its SAS Semi-Automated Tank Cleaning System and microemulsion SAS PitClean 102C products from Houston, Texas to Brazil.

The SAS Solution:

The fixed installed tank cleaning system, using Scanjet tank cleaning machines worked with the SAS PitClean 102C to quickly clean out the mud pits, fluidise all of the caked mud, flush the lines and reduce men entry into the pits. 

The SAS PitClean 102C was used to create a wash pill in a pit of 40bbl (3% SAS PitClean 102C). This wash pill was used to clean out all 14 mud pits and flush the lines.

After each pit the dirty wash pill was placed in pit 1 for settling out. The solids would settle out and the wash pill was re-used to clean out the next mud pit.

This was repeated until all 14 mud pits were clean to brine standard.

To Sum Up...

The total waste volume was approximately 80bbl. This would separate out under gravity into water for polishing and disposal and solids for transport back to shore.

Time reduction was 50% - 70% compared to standard cleaning approach using men entry and regular detergents.

Find out more about this case study here: