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.

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.

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

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.

Delivering a tailor-made solution to your waste

All the best plans come to nothing unless you can deliver on the work and meet the expectations and requirements.

As a team we have worked for 20 years to consistently deliver the results when it matters. Genuine delivery of results means you have to always learn, keep an open mind, listen to others with experience and follow a methodical path towards problem solving.

Delivery of results means setting aside egos and working together to implement the hard work carried out in preparation and planning.

We have a deep understanding of the processes involved in oil waste creation, transport and treatment and once on-site we know how to get things set up and continuously improve the process. For example the dose rate of our chemistry virtually always reduces over the first 2 months of operation as we train and guide our clients in use of the chemistry and running the process. Making a waste treatment process as efficient as we can means building long term relationships. It is why we worked with the Ineos refinery in Scotland for over 10 years to treat the stored oil sludge on site.

Our technology has provided us with a unique capability to handle virtually all oil waste. The versatility of our process and chemistry means that with one chemical we can almost always solve any oil waste issue in the treatment process.

We have hugely enjoyed our work over the past 20 years and the amazing experience of seeing people’s daily work life change because what was a problem for them is now just the daily routine of applying our microemulsion chemistry. We have delivered our solutions from the UK to Canada and from Ecuador to Malaysia and Australia. Together we can get this process delivered to your site as well.

3 Reasons Why It's Important to be On-Site for Treatment Trials

Update: We are living strange times where our way of doing business is challenged. It was not always clear why on-site treatment trials were the best approach to designing a customized solution for your waste. However, now, with the current travel restrictions in place and left with no choice it becomes even more obvious that this practice was how the industry was moving forward when dealing with waste.

When working with our clients to find solutions for oil slops and oil sludge treatment challenges, we often spend significant time on-site to fully understand the treatment process and to support field treatment trials.   

Our customers typically work through a 5-step process with us in order to find and implement the best possible solution.

Step 1: Test waste samples in the lab

Step 2: Site visit to fully understand the situation and processing setup

Step 3: Work together to design and run the appropriate field trial

Step 4: Review results and learnings

Step 5: Implement on a larger scale as appropriate

Being on-site for steps 2 & 3 is very important and contributes greatly to a successful outcome.  There are three key reasons why we believe being on-site for these steps is so important:  

“Minor” details can have a major impact – No matter how many telephone calls, web conferences or even face-to-face meetings held prior the trial, it’s impossible to cover every detail. Some seemingly insignificant details can have a significant impact on the outcome.  Many of these details can only become apparent by being on-site and seeing, hearing and feeling the situation.   

Not everything goes to plan – Despite planning every trial thoroughly, in a live waste treatment environment, very rarely does everything go to plan. The waste stream may change, a piece of equipment may break, a key person may get ill and not be on-site… to name just a few. In most cases there’s a solution, but it requires being on-site in order to find a workable solution that still delivers a successful field trial.

If at first you don’t succeed – Every oil sludge treatment situation is unique – the objectives, the equipment, the setup, the waste stream and the operators. Additionally, the SAS-ES microemulsions behave differently from other chemistries. With all of these variables, it is often the case that the first test during a field trial will not provide be the best result. However, because we are able to pull on thousands of past experiences and a detailed knowledge of how the products work, we can very quickly begin to make hypothesis as to what is going on and why. We can then modify and optimize the approach accordingly. Without being on-site this type of rapid testing and learning is more difficult. 

If you think we could help you, we would love to hear from you, get in contact and request a proposal for a SAS-ES on-site evaluation. Easy as that!

4 Ways That SAS-ES Minimizes Risk for Oil-Contaminated Waste

Update: In the last weeks we looked at what the SAS ES Process is and why it is unique. The answer is simple. It is unique because your waste is unique and we tailor-make the solution for you. This article was published last year and looks our chemicals more in-depth. It is a great addition to give you a comprehensive overview of how we design our solutions.

We are frequently contacted by consultants and waste treatment professionals looking for solutions for treating oil-contaminated waste such as slops, muds, tank bottom sludge and refinery waste. They explain they’re looking at both chemical and thermal solutions, and are weighing up the pros and cons. The number one reason for seriously considering SAS-ES as part of the solution is risk reduction.

Here are 4 reasons why SAS-ES offers you the lowest risk option, and why you should take a serious look at SAS-ES chemical based system before committing to any significant investment.

1. CapEx: The SAS-ES chemical based system often requires low capex because it is sometimes possible to use existing equipment or even simply gravity separation. If no equipment is available, the capex will be less than $1m per MIST System. Thermal units cost in the region of $5m - $7m per unit. 

1. Throughput: The SAS-ES chemical based system has a throughput of 6-20T/hour. Thermal units typically have a throughput of 2-6T/hour. This enhanced throughput will significantly increase the revenue generating potential from the operations.  

1. Flexibility: The SAS-ES chemical based solution is effective on a wide range of waste types, ranging from very “wet” to “drier” wastes. Thermal units are only effective on relatively dry waste. If the waste has too much liquid, the thermal unit is ineffective. The increased flexibility will allow you to treat a wider range of wastes, reducing the risk of receiving waste you simply can’t treat.

1. Low Risk Test: If you have a centrifuge and oil contaminated waste, for only a few thousand dollars it’s possible to get very accurate cost/performance data on your specific waste stream, allowing you to develop a solid business case. With the SAS-ES approach, it is possible to spend only a few thousand dollars to potentially save $5m-$7m! 

The reality is that in many cases it is a combination of using SAS-ES chemical first. The key is understanding when to use what. For high volume, low capex, high flexibility, and risk minimization, the SAS-ES chemical solution is tough to beat.  

Find out more about our chemicals for oil waste treatment by visiting our website today! 

The Importance of Getting to Know Your Oil Contaminated Waste

Update: At SAS ES we have a process. And it has proven to be a success for all our clients. But this is a process of co-creation and cooperation. You enable us to design the perfect solution to your challenge by understanding your waste and understanding your situation. Check out one of our older articles where we explain how we are partners in treating waste.

When it comes to oil contaminated waste, knowing is half the battle. 

We talk to 100s of companies every year who are seeking solutions to their oil contaminated waste challenges. For about 80% of the cases we’re able to offer an effective solution. We’re able to deliver this level of success because we’re obsessed with truly understanding the waste and the overall solution.

Without understanding the waste and the broader context of the situation, it’s virtually impossible to offer a workable solution. In this post I share the types of questions we ask in order to get to the root of the problem and offer a viable solution. If you’re dealing with oil contaminated waste, you may find these questions useful as you explore possible solutions.

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Understanding the waste: Over the last 18 years we’ve come across just about every type of oil contaminated waste… sludges, slops, drill cuttings, drilling waste, drilling muds, slurries, tank bottom sludges, refinery waste, thick emulsions, crude sludges, and many many more. In some cases, the terminology can be misleading. Some will call a “slop” a “sludge” or “drill cuttings” a “drilling waste”, and sometimes we just get, “it’s ugly black stuff”. This is why we are less concerned about the terminology and more concerned about the actual waste. For us, it’s not critical what it’s called. More important issues are what’s in it, what’s the objective, and what are the economic drivers? 

To effectively understand a waste, it’s important to ask some very specific questions:

1. Specifically, what is the source of the waste?

2. Is it all one type of waste or is it a collection of different wastes?

3. If it’s a collection, specifically, what are the sources?

4. Does the waste come from one site or multiple sites?

5. Specifically, what has been done to the waste over what time frame?

6. What is in the waste? – be as specific as possible. 

After answering these questions, everyone should have a pretty good idea of what we’re actually dealing with. This will give us a reasonable starting point for finding a solution.

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Understanding the situation: The next step is to understand the full context of the situation. This can vary greatly depending on the waste, the location and the nature of the project.

There are some key questions we always ask:

1. Specifically, what are you trying to achieve? Why? Why? Why? – Sometimes the first answer doesn’t provide the true motivation.

2. Do you require the “perfect” solution or just a “better” solution? – While the starting point may be to find the perfect solutions, in many cases a “significantly better” solution is an excellent result. Where perfect may be cost prohibitive, “significantly better” may be feasible.

3. What are the implications if you don’t find a solution?

4. What are the drivers? – Oil recovery? Disposal costs? Access to water? Processing capacity? Waste volumes? Storage space? 

The answers to these questions will significantly influence the design and implementation of the best solution. Understanding the entire situation enables the development of the best solution.

If you have an oil contaminated waste treatment challenge, truly understanding the problem is the only way to find the right solution. These questions help us and hopefully they will help you in finding the right solution for your situation.

If you think we could help you find the right solution for your oil waste treatment please get in touch, we would be happy to hear from you! 

Designing a Solution that delivers

I was at a trial once in Aberdeen where our chemistry was used to treat some particularly difficult oil drilling waste. The results were not good to put it mildly. We knew the chemistry worked as we had done the initial assessment. We also knew the equipment was fine.

The problem of course was that the process was not well designed. The wrong equipment was being used with our chemistry. Equipment used for solids control was being pushed into a waste treatment role with a totally new type of chemistry and so the engineers onsite went with what they knew. Not a good day at the office!

However, the fastest and best learning comes from getting things wrong and within a few days we turned things around. An important lesson to take on board. It is crucial to design the right process including waste handling on-site, equipment included, skills required and managing and disposing of output materials and all this while taking into account the location (remote site in Africa, next to a refinery, offshore Canada?).

Many of our clients are companies that have invested in waste processes and equipment unsuitable for the waste being treated or not capable of meeting the expected and required outputs. Our job is to help and try to augment or adapt the process in place so performance can be improved using our unique chemistry. In many cases this can be done with fairly limited changes. In some situations, the process in place is wholly unsuitable and a new process needs to be put in place.

Design is not just the decision on whether a decanter centrifuge is needed. Design includes the establishment of a treatment plan, a site plan and that key understanding of what needs to be achieved by the client.

As a company we have found our unique place in the oil waste treatment industry by specialising in designing and delivering the right solutions all based around that amazing chemical technology that separates out oil slops and oil sludge.

Key Steps to Evaluate your Oil Waste Treatment Process

Here at SAS Environmental Services we believe there are certain key steps you should take when evaluating how to treat your oil waste treatment process. These steps include identifying your objectives, looking after your decanter centrifuge, finding the best chemistry possible, and developing the most effective waste process. Here's a bit more information...

Objectives

It is important to identify your objectives at the start of your oil waste treatment process. Understanding what you need from your waste process should be the first step to success. This could be: oil with less than 4% water, reduced waste to landfill by 50%, water clean enough for re-use, increased oil recovery, etc.               

If you are not achieving your ultimate goal it is important to evaluate your process in detail to identify where improvements can be made. If you are achieving your goals it could be beneficial to evaluate your process to assess if there is potential to improve further or achieve better-cost savings.                 

It can also be good to look at any historical records that clearly show the data and how often the needed results were achieved. You can then assess what the circumstances were when these results were achieved. 

Decanter Centrifuge

We often see decanters that have not been serviced regularly and in many cases the fact that results are less than optimum are down to basic issues with the decanter. Often the decanter has been used for different waste in the past and the settings are not optimized, this is not always difficult to solve and can make a huge difference to your results.   

Is the manufacturer manual available? If so what is the recommendation for daily maintenance for the equipment? Greasing? Lubrication? Cleaning?

It may sound like an obvious thing to have to check but we have seen this quite a few times when the scroll is running the wrong way inside the centrifuge. Again, easily fixed once spotted but will cause a whole range of issues if it is not resolved.

A scroll that is worn down or damaged will affect the size and shape of the beach inside the decanter and the movement of the solids within the equipment. Regular maintenance can detect and prevent this. Protection of the scroll through tungsten carbide protection is one option to reduce scroll damage.      

Often the people that were trained to use the decanter have moved on in the organization or left altogether. The new individuals responsible have not always been through decanter operation and maintenance training. Even 1 or 2 days of basic training can have a measurable impact on the process

Cleaning of the interior of the decanter at regular intervals will prevent blocking the equipment and keep performance levels high.

Often decanters are set once for a type of waste and left in that configuration. The waste you are treating today might be quite different from the waste that was treated when the decanter was set up. A few basic changes in the decanter settings can have a big impact on the outcome of the process.                       

Chemistry

If you are not using chemistry in your process it is worth considering the injection of emulsion breaking chemistry.                     

A dosing pump that is not properly serviced can inject the wrong amount of additive. This means low performance or bad economics. If it is not calibrated, you do not know how much chemical you are injecting. This is a must. The dosing pump is often overlooked and calibrating this can sometimes save 50% on the chemical cost and have a significant impact on the result of the treatment process. 

As the composition of the waste changes regularly you need to check to see if a higher or lower dose rate of chemistry might give you better results. You can do this by conducting small lab tests to check the results. If you speak to your chemical provider, they may be able to help you with guidelines on does rate changes with different types of waste streams. This simple step can lead to a small investment with big potential pay back.                        

Your waste changes and so does the best chemistry. Set aside time once a quarter or once a year to do a review. New chemistry comes on the market, waste changes. What worked last year might not be the best solution next year.             

Waste Process

Different types of waste should have different "play-books" to treat the waste most effectively. Develop the best approach and create check-lists.

Keeping oil rich waste separate will allow you to recover oil more efficiently. This oil has real value. Diluting it with low-oil waste makes recovery more expensive and technically challenging. If you are not already doing this, you might be throwing out some real value. 

If you recover oil but this has too many solids or too much water, you want to assess the chemical treatment possibilities available.

SAS-ES can help you in any of these steps, we can carry out a lab evaluation for you to help you evaluate the best process for the waste you are treating. This will allow you to implement the necessary changes to consistently meet your objectives. If this sounds like something you would be interested in please get in contact, we would love to hear from you!