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.

The Problem with Flowback Waste

In this blog, there will be a quick introduction to flowback waste, one possible way to help address this challenge will be discussed and the results from a recent test on a flowback waste sample from the US will be shared.

What is Flowback Waste?

Flowback is the waste generated through the fracturing process. The composition of flowback waste can differ greatly, containing anywhere from 3 – 60% solids with highly variable amounts of oil and water. This unpredictability results in a waste stream that is difficult to treat in terms of separating the solids, water and valuable oil.

Some areas are fortunate enough to have the right geology and regulatory environment to dispose of flowback from fracking operations into injection wells. However, most areas don’t have the luxury of injection, making treatment and disposal a serious issue.

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Cost Transportation Dilemma

One of the major issues related to dealing with flowback waste is the transportation costs. In most cases the water required to frack a well is trucked in, and then the flowback waste is trucked out. Trucking the water in for an average well can easily require 200 truckloads, and shipping the flowback waste out requires even more.   

Reducing the volume of drilling waste, re-using recovered water and in the process reducing the number of truckloads, represents a huge cost saving opportunity for the industry.

So, how is this possible?

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Solution

I’ll use a recent lab test to help demonstrate the possibilities.

The picture below is from a flowback waste sample recently sent to us by one of our US customers. This flowback waste had a relatively low solids content but a significant amount of oil. Separating the waste using heat and other chemistries had been unsuccessful.

We tested the SAS-ES chemical on this waste and within 10 minutes of adding the SAS SludgeTreat product, the waste separated into clear oil and water phases, with a small rag layer of oil/solids in the middle.

If a decanter centrifuge were used to treat the waste, one would be able to achieve an almost complete solids removal and a very good oil and water split.

In the field this would allow for the user to recover virtually all of the water and oil. The much smaller volume of dry solids would then be trucked away to a landfill.

The ability to re-use high quality fracking water has the potential to cut water transport to well sites by up to 80% (or approx.160 trucks). As the solids are such a small part of this waste stream, waste disposal and waste transport costs can be greatly reduced, in some cases by as much as over 90%.

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Final thoughts

There is no doubt that fracking waste, be it flowback or other drilling waste, is a major issue.  The good news is that there are methods that could cut waste volumes and associated disposal costs by an order of magnitude.  

If you’re dealing with flowback waste or other drilling waste, and you’re interested in reducing waste volumes and disposal costs, feel free to get in touch! 

Assessing the waste parameters

In my previous blog post on the process we use at SAS Environmental Services to deliver the right solution to each of our clients I covered the importance we place on understanding the issues surrounding the oil waste and the required outcomes to achieved.

In this blog I want to talk a little bit about the second step on the road to successful waste treatment. We call it the “Assess” step and it really contains a lot of our experience of gained in successfully managing oil waste projects and the effectiveness of our unique chemical technology in new and existing operations.

Because we have a unique chemical technology that enables a whole new way of treating and managing oil based waste the assumption is often that the chemistry needs to be tested on the waste itself. In most cases this is not needed as we already know from 20 years of operations where the chemistry will be effective and where it will not. The assessment here is about the exact parameters of the oil waste in questions and the nature of the treatment process. Oil waste such as slop or sludge is almost always variable in composition. This means any effective treatment process will need to have several steps. This can include a pre-screening step, blending in of solvents or oil or water and the use of heat. The assessment going on at this stage is the determination of the steps needed to take the waste from one state (the start) to another state (treated). This often takes the form of conversation with the client and at times some additional lab work to confirm and evaluate the impact of these waste manipulations.

“The assessment here is about the exact parameters of the oil waste in questions and the nature of the treatment process. ”

— Mark Zwinderman | CEO

Once we have an outline of the steps needed to treat the waste and we have a clear view of the operational circumstances (Remote site? Power availability? Space?) we can sit down with the client and discuss the economics of the process, what investments are required and to what extent the existing infrastructure can be augmented using our technology to improve results.

At this point we have a clear picture of the steps needed to treat the waste and the operational circumstances in which to treat the waste. There is also a good understanding of the expected economics. That means it is time to “Design” the process and solution! More on that step in the next blog.

Understanding the issue

The process we have at SAS Environmental Services to ensure we get the right solution to the right customer for the right waste is something we developed over the past 20 years.

You cannot deliver the right solution to the customer without first making sure you understand the project, the customer, the waste and the required outcomes. At the same we have to always work and improve on making sure what we do and what can do is clear to the customer. Understanding is harder than it seems and in life we all are often guilty of assuming we understand the other person’s point of view or problem. Follow-on questions and a genuine curiosity in solving the problem are critical for success.

We have a few (not so secret) weapons. First of all we have a unique chemical technology based on microemulsions that allows us to treat oil waste and achieve results not possible any other way. It’s amazing and we are very proud of our technology and products and especially the kind of results we enable our customers to achieve.

Secondly, we have a genuine curiosity and desire to understand the oil sludge problem, to understand the operational and logistical issues in treating waste in the desert, jungle, North Sea or Canada (in the winter. Seriously. I love Canada, the people and whoever invented the heated steering wheel).

One of the exciting parts of our work is speaking to you, to our new clients and learn more about the waste, the history of the waste and what we together have to do to call it a success at the end of the project.

A very small example of understanding and asking the right follow-on questions goes back to a small project in Canada. We were asked if we could treat drill cuttings. A waste that for us, in our experience, consisted of relatively large rock cuttings. Substantially sized solid particles you would wash with our chemistry and then dispose of. Once we got to the site the waste in question was liquid mud waste contaminated with fine solids. An interesting conversation followed on what “cuttings” are. We compromised and all we agreed these were very small drill cuttings indeed. Different chemistry and engineering required and a different outcome to aim for.

One person’s oil sludge is another person’s oil slop. Give us a ring or send us an email with your waste and your requirements and let’s see if we can start working together and get an understanding of the project.

7 Ways to Get More Out of Your Centrifuge for Oil Sludge Treatment

If you’re involved in treating oil-contaminated slops and sludge, it is likely you use a centrifuge in your treatment process.   

We love centrifuges and centrifuge operators, in most cases, they love us as well. This is because centrifuges almost always improve the effectiveness of SASES chemicals, and SASES chemicals almost always improve the performance of centrifuges. 

Due to this love / love relationship, we have spent a lot of time with centrifuge operators, and during that time we’ve picked up some “tricks of the trade” that we’ve seen improve a centrifuge’s sludge-splitting capability.

Below are the 7 top tips we’ve picked up from the experts in the field:

1. Pre-screen your waste feedstock using small scale equipment and modify your treatment approach accordingly.

2. Use heat if available.

3. Determine the solids, water and oil content of your waste prior to full operations. This will help to judge how to control the solids loading.

4. Blend lighter slops/waste material with heavier waste rather than adding water.

5. Have accurate ways to measure key variables such as feed stock throughput, chemical dosing, centrifuge speed, g-force, scroll speed/depth, etc. Access to these measurements will allow you to tune the system for best results.

6. Reduce operating variables wherever possible. This is one of the reasons most operators prefer using a decanter centrifuge instead of a tricanter centrifuge.

7. Do not exceed 30% solids loading/content. If you exceed 30% solids loading, there is a good chance of plugging the centrifuge.  

This list is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully there are 1 or 2 ideas that might be able to help you improve your centrifuge performance. If you have additional ideas and suggestions, please let us know. We are always on the lookout for ways to help our customers improve their oil sludge treatment and oil waste process. 

5 Clues You're Spending Too Much on Hazardous Waste Disposal

If you’re a waste management company providing services for the oil and gas industry, you know all too well that the disposal of oil contaminated hazardous waste is extremely costly.

You may think that this is just part of business, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Well, we’re here to tell you this is not the case.

In most cases, waste management companies can significantly reduce their hazardous waste disposal costs.

Ask yourself the following 5 questions. If you answer “Yes” to any of them, there’s a good chance you could start reducing your hazardous waste disposal costs within 30 days.

1. Do you incinerate a large % of the residual waste from your oil sludge treatment?

2. After centrifuging the waste, do the solids contain more than 5% oil?

3. Are you transporting your waste to a centralized treatment facility?

4. Do you use heat in your oil waste process to cause the oil, water and solids to separate?

5. Do you encounter oil contaminated waste that you simply cannot treat with your current operations?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re probably spending too much on the treatment and disposal of your oil contaminated hazardous waste.

To learn more about how we help waste management companies spend less on the treatment and disposal of oil contaminated waste, visit us at www.sasenvironment.com or get in contact today!

What's Your Waste Management Problem?

Here at SAS-ES we love talking to our customers. Talking about what’s working, what’s not working, and one of our favourite topics of conversations is problems!

We love solving problems - the bigger and messier the better. That is why this blog post is dedicated to problems… and of course finding solutions to these problems. 

Problems are good. If you don’t have problems, there’s a good chance you’re not trying hard enough. The biggest problem with problems isn’t actually finding the solution, but it’s properly defining the problem in the first place. 

Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world, he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. 

Keeping this in mind, what are your waste management problems?  

If you need some help to get you going, here are a few thought starters.

• What keeps you awake at night?

• What headaches do you have that you would love to disappear?

• What is preventing your operations from being more efficient?

• What is preventing you from achieving your business/personal goals?

• What are your employees’ biggest challenges?

• What are your customers’ complaints that are creating problems for you?

• What are your customers’ problems you could possibly solve?

Now that you have a good list of problems, check out “Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving” to get started finding a solution.

If your problem involves oil contaminated waste, heavy oil sludge, refinery waste etc. we’d love to hear about it. We may not have a solution, but if we don’t then we’re happy to help in any way we can to move you towards a good solution… or at the very least, help you to clearly define your problem.