Apparently, the visitor numbers for ADIPEC this year were up by 7% compared to last year. The Abu Dhabi oil & gas exhibition and conference keeps growing. We were there as part of the Scottish Development International delegation and thanks go to their fantastic team and tireless support for Scottish businesses.
It is always interesting to see how things are changing and there are three things that jumped out to me.
Read MoreADIPEC 2019 is here… larger, more inspiring and more dynamic than ever. With key speakers such as Condoleezza Rice, Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thran and Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, Frank Fannon, among others, the show’s theme aimed at integrating innovation and diversity in a more conservative industry.
If you’ve participated, you would have noticed a little book in your welcome pack titled ‘Connecting the Global Energy Community’. That’s exactly how it felt. The Oil & Gas industry is a very tight knitted society where relationship management is your strongest skill. This may come as a surprise to an outsider as the perception is that oil & gas is a more product-centric trade. In fact, the key ingredient for a successful career in this area is the degree of trust and commitment you can insert in your work ethic. ‘Actions speak better than words’ is a fully embraced mantra. But these do not come easily and it’s no wonder that in the time these skills are nurtured people became more than partners, they became a community.
The same applies for SAS Environmental Services. With an experience of 20 years in the industry SAS has always had one goal in mind. Find a solution to a very challenging problem – drilling waste and everything associated with it. Different actors within the industry struggled with this obstacle, needing to keep certain KPIs in mind. While those are important for us and our partners, what we really want to achieve is a way to help the industry minimize its impact on the environment and prosper in the same time. A testament to our success is the miles we walked at ADIPEC meeting with our partners. Exciting times are waiting us and we’re looking forward to sharing them with you.
Around this time of the year if you’re a kid you’re looking forward to winter holidays. If you’re working in the Oil & Gas industry, you’re looking forward to ADIPEC. And that goes for the SAS Team as well.
Set to begin next week, from 11 to 14 November, ADIPEC is consider one of the top events in the industry and for a good reason. A more contemporary event, ADIPEC started in 2005 and in the last 14 years it established itself as a leading promulgator for the Oil & Gas development with success stories rewarded with the prestigious ADIPEC Awards.
This year ADIPEC focuses on Gas & Oil 4.0 and its particular means of achieving it through digitalisation. Gas & Oil 4.0 refers to Industry 4.0, hailed as the 4th Industrial Revolution. In essence it’s a trend of technological improvement, automation and data exchange that will make Oil & Gas ‘smarter’, more efficient, more secure, more profitable and more environmentally friendly.
SAS Environmental Services is great supporter of this impactful progress. Our innovative chemistry and processes deal with waste in a conscientious way and help ease daily production and maintenance activities. Feedback from our partners include acknowledgements of energy and cost efficiency, increased oil recovery, water safe disposal back into the environment and a reduced carbon footprint. These solutions integrated with the new technological advancements help consolidate your vision.
We hope you’ll let us support you in this new era. The SAS Team - Mark, John and Laura – will be happy to welcome you at the Scottish Pavilion, stand # 1210. We’d love to hear your new ideas, achievements and challenges.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you wish to arrange for a meeting beforehand. If not, see you there!
The oil industry operates within a wider society and provides a vital resource and service to society. Without Oil and Gas our current economy will not function. No doubt the future will bring big changes and the energy industry will play a key part in this. There are things the Oil industry can do to improve the environment and contribute to the growing energy needs of the planet.
"What are the available methods for the oil & gas industry to improve its environmental performance ?"
As an environmental technology provider and experts in the design and optimisation of oil waste treatment processes we have our views on what we can do to improve the industry’s performance. Let's look at the creation and treatment of drilling waste. Roughly separated into solid waste (drill cuttings) and liquid waste (slops) these materials are created in substantial volumes around the world.
A common treatment method is the use of some type of thermal system to heat the cuttings and so remove the oil and water from the solids. This leaves mostly dry cuttings and, depending on the process, mud and geology, provides some recovered oil and some emulsion slops waste. The CO2 production as a result of running a thermal system on diesel is substantial.
The SAS technology process is proven and robust and can alleviate this challenge by:
Lower the CO2 emissions of cuttings treatment by up to 65% compared to traditional methods
Lowering the environmental footprint of the MIST cuttings treatment process by making our unique chemistry from plant based and waste material derived green chemistry.
Reducing the need for generators and logistics relating to diesel movement by providing support service in running the entire MIST process from mobile solar panel units.
Using new technology and using proven technology much of the drilling waste can be eliminated. We can prevent most liquid drilling waste, or slops waste, by using our chemistry in cleaning operations. This cuts waste by over 90% and reduces the need for waste transport by OSV and truck and removes the requirement for waste treatment and disposal.
There is a lot of low hanging fruit ready to be picked and I have no doubt others in the industry can see other areas where this is the case. Becoming more environmentally responsible while reducing operating costs makes sense. Now is the time to apply what we know we can do.
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:
Pre-screen your waste feedstock using small scale equipment and modify your treatment approach accordingly.
Use heat if available.
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.
Blend lighter slops/waste material with heavier waste rather than adding water.
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.
Reduce operating variables wherever possible. This is one of the reasons most operators prefer using a decanter centrifuge instead of a tricanter centrifuge.
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.
A constant challenge is to balance your waste treatment with a sustainable process that is not only more efficient but also more profitable in the long term. If you've caught up with this month's newsletter then you're up to date with our discussion with ways available to reduce emissions relating to the treatment of drill cuttings. Straight and simple - switching to a low energy cuttings treatment process as the SAS MIST system will reduce emissions by 2/3 compared to thermal systems.
Another waste product from the drilling and exploration process is the liquid slops consisting of mud residue, wash pills, water, oil, solids and whatever else was on the rig and had to be disposed off. This waste is notoriously hard to treat. There are some methods out there but most tend to struggle when solids content is over 4% or so. Our chemistry and process especially likes the slops once the solids get over 4%!
For the treatment of oil slops waste there are some very easy ways to reduce transport and treatment energy use and therefor emissions.
Most slops waste is still stored in pits, skips and tanks or transported to a waste facility where the waste is treated by mixing with solid drilling waste and processed through a thermal treatment system.This presents a number of issues. Storing the waste is great if you are renting out skips and tanks, not so great if you are the company doing the renting!
The treatment of liquid slops waste via thermal processes is inefficient and energy intensive. The high liquid content will also slow down the solids treatment process.
The SAS MIST process uses our unique chemistry to split the slops waste into its three main phases:
The oil is recovered and can be used again.
The water is recovered and discharged or re-used.
The solids (5 – 15% of the waste) are the only waste material.
This means that in less than a minute we can take the slops, mix with our chemistry and split the waste into oil, water and solids. And that is not the only advantage!
The process is robust and can be moved to the rig site, which reduces transport logistics of the waste, minimises the need for slops storage and returns base oil to where it is needed. Processing up to 40ton of slops per hour the process keeps the waste under control.
As no heat is required the process is low energy and reduces emissions greatly. And we are working to ensure that solar panel units can be used to run the process. Just another robust, proven method to reduce costs and to reduce CO2 emissions relating to oil waste management.
If you would like more information about our SAS MIST System don't hesitate to drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!
Many customers arrive at our website or call us after having considered a number of options for their oil slops treatment. The standard for treating this waste is still to try and de-water using some kind of chemistry or blend the waste with oil solids and process through an energy intensive, slow thermal type of process.
The difference between de-watering oil slops waste and genuine treatment using the SASES chemistry and process is fundamental and creates a completely new economy in waste management.
De-watering only ever removes part of the water from the waste. At time this is very good quality water, however it concentrates the remaining water in a matrix consisting of solids, oil, chemicals and water. This resulting concentrated slurry or sludge is then very hard to treat. So, effectively removing part of the water has reduced the waste volume and now the remaining waste is much harder to process. Often landfill or thermal processing are the only realistic options available for this sludge.
In order to landfill the waste in many cases the sludge has to be stabilised or fixed and this approach doubles (sometimes triples) the total volume of the waste for transport and disposal. Thermal processing (often combined with drill cuttings) is energy intensive and slow.
Our unique chemistry in comparison creates a three-way split between the oil, water and solids. This means oil is recovered with an economic value, all the water is recovered, and only dry solids remain for disposal to landfill or back to sea.
Let us use a simple example to illustrate the possible difference in operations.
There is 1,000 tons (or m³) of oil slops waste to be treated. This consists of 20% oil, 70% water and 10% solids. In a de-watering process this would look as the following:
The first step is to de-water the slops using standard de-watering chemistry.
This creates a 50/50 split. The top half (500m³) is good quality, clear water. The bottom half consists of the remaining water (40%), oil (40%), chemicals and solids (20%).
The clear water is discharged.
The bottom sludge needs to go to landfill and requires stabilising or fixing (choose your favourite material – sawdust, ash, etc.). We assume a 1:1 blend of sludge with fixing material.
Now there is 1,000 m³ of solid waste to go to landfill.
When using the SASES chemistry the process is minimised as following:
The original slop waste is dosed, and a three-way split is created.
The water (70%) is discharged, the oil (20%) is recovered and re-used or sold and only the dry solids (10%) go to landfill.
There is only 100m³ of solid waste to dispose of. An order of magnitude less compared to traditional de-watering chemistry.
Let's focus on the benefits of SASES unique chemistry. You're not only disposing of less solids but you're also gaining value through oil recovery. If we follow the previous example your numbers would look as following:
The oil has a value (let’s assume $300/m³) and 200m³ of oil equates to $60,000.
If we assume transport and landfill is $100/m³ (I am sure you all know the figure locally and this of course varies hugely around the world, but we have to pick a number) the landfill costs for de-watering are 1,000m³x $100 =$100,000.
So, already we have a cost of $100,000 for de-watering and no recovered value.
For the SASES three-way split the landfill costs are 100m³ x $100 = $10,000.
For the SASES approach we have $10,000 disposal cost and $60,000 oil value recovered. This equates to a difference between de-watering and SASES of $150,000 in favour of the SASES approach.
If this approach sounds like something you would be interested in, simply contact us today! We would be happy to hear from you.
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.
Over the last 20 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 veryspecific questions:
Specifically, what is the source of the waste?
Is it all one type of waste or is it a collection of different wastes?
If it’s a collection, specifically, what are the sources?
Does the waste come from one site or multiple sites?
Specifically, what has been done to the waste over what time frame?
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.
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:
Specifically, what are you trying to achieve? Why? Why? Why? – Sometimes the first answer doesn’t provide the true motivation.
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.
What are the implications if you don’t find a solution?
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!
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!
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.
Do you incinerate a large % of the residual waste from your oil sludge treatment?
After centrifuging the waste, do the solids contain more than 5% oil?
Are you transporting your waste to a centralized treatment facility?
Do you use heat in your oil waste process to cause the oil, water and solids to separate?
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!
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.
Health and safety is an aspect of the oil and gas industry that includes all players, such as the government, companies, associations, workers, and so on. In the UK this aspect of the industry is of paramount importance, and it is believed that the new digital transformation which is sweeping through the industry can help the sector improve health and safety even further.
Offshore workers are constantly exposed to many health and safety risks; therefore, it must be a priority to prevent major accidents that could result in serious injuries or indeed fatalities. It seems this has been successful over recent years, with the sector's three-year rolling average, non-fatal injury rate reducing and remaining lower than other sectors such as transport, construction, and manufacturing.
““The industry’s work to improve safety performance is delivering.””
Technology now plays an important role in improving health and safety in the oil and gas industry. Industry players and employees around the world believe through smart sensors, wearables, and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), the oil and gas sector could improve the safety of its workers even further. Technology has already shown how useful it can be to the sector by boosting workers safety in remote locations, alerting them to potential exposure to toxic gases, monitoring their vitals in harsh environments offshore, and feeding them real-time data during critical decisions.
In many other industries the digital transformation causes some concern however it seems that is not the case in the oil and gas sector. Overall the reception to digitalisation is very warm, with 77% of workers seeing digitalisation as a positive development for the oil and gas industry.
““Oil and gas companies are leaning on technology to make existing roles - and the people in them - more effective.”
”
SAS-ES receive many oil sludge waste samples, for this particular project the sample provided was black, oil coloured and contained a high oil content. The sample had been recovered from tank bottom sludge from a crude oil storage tank and sent to us by one of our customers to try and create a three-phase split of oil, water and solids.
What we did...
In order to successfully recover any oil present and remove as much of the water and sediment as possible, SAS-ES used a standard screening test method to reach the most effective result.
A sample of the waste was dosed directly with 0.5% of the SAS-ES products. Samples were then shaken thoroughly for 30 seconds and were spun in a spin out rotor centrifuge at 3,000rpm for 2 minutes. The samples were not diluted with water or any hydrocarbon solvent.
The results...
The testing provided different results for each product. However, it is clear the best result was obtained using the SAS SludgeTreat 156SC product, a further picture of this split is shown on the right.
So, to sum up...
After dosing the waste sample with our SAS SludgeTreat 156SC an immediate reduction in viscosity was observed. Our customer gained a significant oil recovery of 54%, with a clear water phase of 38%, meaning that solids only made up about 8% of the total waste stream.
Another successful oil sludge treatment process by SAS-ES!
Want to find out more about the SludgeTreat 156SC? Contact Us by clicking the button below.
You can reduce your logistical, shipping and transportation costs by treating, disposing and recycling your oil contaminated waste products, while minimising ecological and environmental risk along the way. SAS-ES products can help you save millions of pounds annually, and here's how...
With global estimations for the production of drill cuttings and waste emulsion slops generated by the oil and gas industry running into millions of tons per annum, the treatment and disposal costs are also on the rise. Contractors and operators are being forced to ship tonnage of oil industry waste by-products to on-shore treatment plants and landfill sites every year, costing millions of pounds. These costs can be reduced significantly using our breakthrough treatment process, microemulsion technology.
SAS-ES have a worldwide portfolio of surfactant and microemulsion waste treatment products for use in environmental and industrial clean-up operations across the oil and gas sector. These products are designed for specific cleaning operations and can remediate a vast range of oil contaminated waste products. For example, the water-based microemulsion surfactant products will clean drill cuttings to below 1%wt oil, enabling the disposal of cuttings at sea and separating emulsion slops wastes into reusable oil, clean water and clean solids.
Microemulsion treatment systems enable both the oil and surfactant to be recovered after the separation processes. They also have low energy requirement, emit low emissions, and have high process throughputs. Surfactant products used are water based, water soluble, biodegradable, non-toxic and non-corrosive, which means they also carry significant health and safety advantages.
The SAS-ES surfactant technologies have a wide range of applications for the industry that increase safety, improve operational efficiency, minimise waste volumes and environmental impact, and dramatically cut operating and production costs. Using these products, we can reduce the volume of waste discharged to landfill produced by certain cleaning applications by over 70%.
With microemulsion surfactant technology we have the ability to effectively separate out contaminated fluids, clean solids wastes, tooling, casing, mud pits and drilling equipment, saving the global industry millions of dollars annually!
Learn more about microemulsions by downloading our free Whitepaper!
The SAS MIST Process is SAS Environmental Services’ unique treatment method for waste in the Oil & Gas Industry. It combines thorough expertise, unique chemistry and innovative engineering to make oil sludge treatment efficient and economic.
Read MoreWe are all aware of the traditional method of manual mud tank cleaning, where teams of trained personnel enter contaminated mud tanks, often erecting scaffolding in order to gain access to the higher parts of the wall and the roof of the tank. However, we don't think this is the most efficient or effective way to get the cleaning done...
Manually cleaning mud tanks is time intensive, costly, and overall a very dirty, tiring job. When you take all these factors into consideration, it is definitely time to find a new way to approach this old issue. We believe the answer lies within the development of microemulsion delivery systems for the cleaning of drilling rig mud pits and platform supply vessels.
Microemulsion chemical technology, when paired with an innovative mechanical delivery system, really reaches a new, optimised level of tank cleaning with fewer health and safety issues compared to the traditional method of operation. Cleaning operations can also be greatly enhanced through the use of 'cleaning in place systems' or 'CIP'. These systems consist of designed skids containing filtration and pumping equipment capable of delivering sufficient pressure and flow to deliver a microemulsion solution to as many as four mud tanks at a time!
By using geared cleaning nozzles, the entire inside of a mud tank can be covered with a microemulsion cleaning solution within a matter of minutes. This minimises man entry into the mud tank, resulting in a fraction of the time being required. Once these nozzles are in place and connected to the CIP system, the microemulsion cleaning solution is pumped through the system and breaks up the drilling mud on the tank walls and the mud cake on the tank floor. The resulting liquid waste can be easily removed using standard pumping equipment.
The microemulsion technology breaks down the mud, creating low viscous slurry. This waste stream is then placed either in a weir tank where solids can settle, and the liquid is reused for further cleaning operations, or the waste is treated using hydro cyclones and/or filtration equipment. The use of microemulsion chemistry allows for a continuous mud tank cleaning process, either onshore for the processing of supply vessels or offshore on the rig.
More information on microemulsions is available on our website!
Decommissioning is undoubtedly a major operational and environmental challenge for operators in the North Sea and other geographic locations. Following some highly publicised decommissioning projects there is pressure on operators and their service partners to adopt the best available technology and the best environmental option wherever possible, to ensure operations are carried out in a safe and environmentally sound manner.
One of the major environmental concerns is how best to clean out heavily contaminated storage tanks in order to reduce the risk of environmental contamination during the dismantling process. There is also pressure on operators to carry out as much remediation work as possible offshore. This is so that the removal and disposal of the waste streams can be carried out on site rather than risk the regulatory consequences of transporting this type of waste back to shore. In general, the decommissioning process can be very risky business involving some serious potential hazards and many unknowns.
It is clear the cleaning operations are not simple, with structures offering little or no access it makes surveying and pre-assessment difficult, and sometimes impossible. Due to this, it is necessary to find an inventive fluid-based solution for cleaning, rather than one based on engineering alone. This is where SAS-ES come in with our response to the problem... Microemulsion cleaning technology.
Our aqueous-based and water-soluble cleaning product range has been proven in the field and demonstrated as one of the most effective forms of cleaning solution available to the upstream oil and gas sector. It has already been successfully used for wellbore cleanup and surface/solids cleaning applications.
This chemical product range boasts many advantages, being safe to handle with all products classified as readily biodegradable and non-hazardous for transport. The waste produced from this cleaning operation can also be minimised on site and treated in a straightforward manner in order to produce clean solids recovered, clean water for disposal and recovered organic phases for recycling/reuse.
Typically, hazardous oil contaminated waste volumes have been reduced by 70-100% through the implementation of this technology. We'll take that as a success!
Learn more about microemulsions by having a look at our other blog posts on the topic!
The process of microemulsification has proven particularly effective in hard surface cleaning applications in the oil and gas industry. The use of this capability exploits a number of features whereby a microemulsion forming surfactant system can absorb oil from a bulk of oil phase, thus forming a microemulsion. So, what are the advantages of this approach?
Microemulsions can absorb oil from an oil coated solid surface or fine solids particulates with the same result without forming stable emulsion waste as a result.
Oil contaminated surfaces can be rendered completely oil free as a result of the microemulsification process.
Any contaminated oil is simply dissolved and then split out by the solution following removal from the tank and can therefore be recovered.
Microemulsions tend to increase in their cleaning efficiency when the active ingredient concentration is increased, therefore lower volumes of higher concentrations may be used in micro-emulsion based cleaning formulations.
Microemulsion systems may also be used to much greater effect at much lower concentrations when compared to normal emulsion forming surfactant systems, resulting in reduced waste, time and cost savings, and improved health and safety aspects.
Reduction of man entry into confined spaces of hazardous storage tanks by the use of automated tank cleaning systems and application of the right type of chemistry.
By working together tank cleaning companies, chemical suppliers, and tank terminals or refinery operators have the ability to reduce the downtime of storage tanks in the maintenance cycle, minimise waste volumes produced and maximise levels of oil recovery during the process using this technology. Waste recovered from these operations can also be separated into water and solids while the recovered oil is simply returned to the storage system or refinery.
It is clear there are many advantages, and therefore no reason why tank cleaning time, waste reduction and oil recovery can't be improved by 50-95% by adopting an integrated approach of using these chemistries.
If you want to learn more about microemulsions, why not contact us today?
More specialised and effective cleaning products and processes are needed now more than ever due to increasingly stringent health, safety and environmental regulations. Using products and processes like this could reduce the volume of waste produced from tank cleaning and dramatically cut project completion times. So, where can we find them?
A way to achieve a more effective process is by using more environmentally sound biobased chemistry, instead of partly biobased or petroleum-based. Unlike in the past, there is now a range of fully biobased products available primarily from suppliers in North America, Europe and China. However, the definition of what is actually a "fully" biobased product is not entirely certain. This definition is important to get right in order to establish the true environmental credentials of the chemicals industry in this field, effectively countering any accusations of greenwash.
The development and use of biosurfactants and biochemicals is aiding the implementation of fully biobased chemicals that can be used in developing new cleaning products. These surfactants are manufactured by bacteria and are subsequently harvested and purified. There are some biosurfactants on the market however, their high cost inhibits the uptake of this technology on a wider scale. Their performance is also not yet comparable to other components to be used in microemulsion formulations.
Here at SAS-ES we want to improve this, which is why we have an active research programme in the development and commercialisation of new biosurfactants with higher effectiveness. This process is called microemulsification and it has proven particularly effective in hard surface cleaning applications in the oil and gas industry.
A microemulsion forming surfactant system can absorb oil from a bulk oil phase, forming a microemulsion. The same solution absorbs oil from an oil coated surface or fine solid particulates with the same result without forming stable emulsion waste as a result. In the microemulsion environment, any oil is effectively encapsulated within the surfactant monolayer and is therefore no longer in direct contact with the original surface or solid. Oil contaminated surfaces may therefore be rendered completely oil free as a result of the microemulsification process.
The mode of action of these cleaning systems is threefold:
The penetration of the contaminating oil layer through the solvent/microemulsion mechanism
The microemulsification of the oil components into the water phase
The water-wetting of the underlying solid surfaces through the surfactant action
For over 15 years SAS Environmental Services have led the way in developing integrated microemulsion solutions for tank cleaning operations, crude oil sludge treatment and oil slops treatment. We aim to create real synergy in our approach to tank cleaning by combining microemulsion chemistries with automated tank cleaning systems.
The cleaning out of oil and fuel storage tanks, supply vessels and tanker trucks is still a time-consuming task. All too often tank cleaning results in the generation of large quantities of liquid waste containing wash fluid, oil and solids ranging from clays, sand to carbon and other particles. In addition the actual cleaning takes a lot of expensive and valuable time. The storage tank is out of service while being cleaned, the supply vessel is not available and the mud pit cleaning could well hold up the drilling process.
However, here at SAS-ES we have developed the philosophy that tank cleaning and the treatment of oily waste could, and should, be carried out in the most effective way possible, causing the least disruption to operations, and creating from that a minimal volume of waste. In fact, our philosophy was, and is, that any oil trapped in the waste, either on the solids or within an emulsion waste, represents lost value and lost resource.
SAS microemulsions chemistries have the ability to reduce the time needed for tank cleaning from several days or weeks to a matter of hours or 1 or 2 days. Looking back over the past 15 years we can safely say that in general time requirements for tank cleaning operations are reduced by 50 – 80% when using SAS products compared to water or solvent washes or simple manual cleaning.
The process of using microemulsion products itself is very simple and revolves around two key benefits of the SAS products:
The highly efficient cleaning effect of the washing fluid. This very quickly removes any hydrocarbon residues and immediately lowers the viscosity of any sludge or tank bottoms present allowing for easy transportation out of the tank.
The prevention of any emulsion waste forming, which is so often the problem when using standard detergent cleaning products. When using the microemulsion products the waste stream is pumped out of the tank and the solids very quickly settle in a simple settling tank or weir tank allowing the wash fluid to be re-used. Because virtually no solids are carried over in the wash fluid the tank cleaning equipment used does not suffer from blockage or erosion by clay and sand particles.
The automated tank cleaning systems used run on significantly lower pressure than many high pressure systems. In fact the SAS automated tank cleaning systems run on a pressure of 100PSIG or 7 bar. This lower pressure results in less damage to protective coatings on the inside of tanks and is made possible through the use of microemulsion products. Instead of physically moving the waste with the impact force of the jet, the waste is removed through the cleaning effect of the SAS microemulsion products.
SAS products are generally supplied in a highly concentrated format, which reduces transport costs. The products can then be diluted to any concentration for use in water and usually a dose of around 5 – 10% is highly effective in most tank cleaning projects. Re-using this wash water 5 – 8 times is custom.
Over the years SAS products have been used to clean out hundreds of tanks, treat thousands of tonnes of oil emulsion waste, tank bottoms and drilling mud slops. Our automated tank cleaning systems are found as mobile CIP systems on the back of trucks and fixed installed on drilling rigs. The philosophy of recovering the resources trapped in waste and doing so efficiently and simply is indeed leading to some remarkable results.
