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.

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.

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! 

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.