The Four Horsemen of the Trial Apocalypse – Episode 1 The Rusty Decanter

/ SAS Environmental Services/
 
 

When things go wrong in oil waste management trial and projects the cause often is one of the four below reasons. Sometimes things go wrong and in my experience it is important to recognise why.

  1.    The wrong or faulty equipment or process

  2.     No expertise to run the equipment properly

  3.   No waste or completely different waste

  4. Bad communication

SAS ES Decanter Performance Centrifuge OIl Waste

These problems can be prevented through early stage working together. Sometimes we can fix the equipment or get a process running through a combination of the equipment and our chemistry. Sometimes it is impossible or we have to return home after a frustrating 3 or 4 days onsite. We have learned these issues can be prevented through good preparation and collaboration.

When we moved into our old office in Livingston we asked if there was a lift and the landlord confirmed that indeed there was a lift. The day we showed up with two trucks, lots of boxes and chemicals we found out the lift was “Out of Order”. Had been “Out of Order” forever and during our 8 year stay would remain “Out of Order”. Always ask the follow on question and clarify. A life lesson worth learning.

If you have a rusty decanter or a non-rusty decanter and not achieving what you think you could achieve you could:

  1.     Get a supplier in to train your team for a day or so

  2.      Create some basic checklists for equipment operation and maintenance and tie checklist completion into your KPIs to track

  3.     Give us a ring or email and see if our chemistry can help

This is no time to waste resources or opportunities. The solution is often easier than you may think.

In most situations the causes of problems fall into one of the above categories. We have seen many instances where for example a decanter centrifuge was available for treatment and on arrival it turned out the centrifuge was 20 years old, riddled with rusty holes (I hope they were rusty holes!) and not hooked up to a power supply. Another time there was a working decanter and nobody onsite who had any idea how to operate it. When the equipment was purchased 5 years earlier one man had been trained. He left shortly after and the training was never repeated for a new person to complete. This resulted in poor waste treatment outcomes and so the decanter ended up in a corner of the site, gathering dust.

In 20 years of working in the industry 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. Discover them by downloading our Decanter Performance Checklist below.