Surface Active Solutions secures an 18 year deal to treat refinery and petrochemical oil contaminated wastes at Grangemouth using a range of micro-emulsion cleaning product and support services.

Surface Active Solutions (SAS) the pioneering micro-emulsion technology specialists have announced an unprecedented 18 year exclusive supply contract to a market estimated to be worth over GBP50 million across Europe. SAS is to provide Ondeo Industrial Solutions with a range of micro-emulsion cleaning product and support services for the INEOS (formerly BP and Innovene) petrochemical complex in Grangemouth, Scotland. The 18 year contract, covers the use of micro-emulsion technology and the method of application developed and patented by SAS for the treatment and remediation of refinery crude oil slop wastes and other hydrocarbon contaminated wastes from petrochemical processes and installations.

This technology in combination with the latest engineering and expertise available in waste processing from Ondeo Industrial Solutions will bring to the market a wholly new method of waste treatment and minimisation.

It is hoped that the new strategic partnership will be able to greatly reduce the volume of hydrocarbon wastes produced from industry operations, recover the oil for recycling and clean water for disposal along with a small fraction of non-hazardous solid materials.

Laurence Bower, Corporate Vice President and UK Managing Director of Ondeo, stated; 'This is a very exciting partnership as it enables us to offer a complete turnkey service to our customers by funding the installation of equipment, managing the movement and treatment of waste and getting best value from disposal routes.

The combination of the latest separation and mixing technology together with the SAS chemistry delivers significant savings on current disposal routes and offers a sustainable environmental solution.

We are currently processing significant volumes of oily waste and will be rolling out the package across UK and Europe in the coming months'.

John Harrison, Development Director of SAS commented, 'This process demonstrates a huge leap forward in terms of technological achievement in this area of waste treatment which has long been a major challenge for a number of industries.

The technology clearly has the potential to provide a complete and economic solution to many applications in this industrial area in line with ever tightening EU environmental legislation'.

Mark Zwinderman, the Operations Director of SAS added, 'We hope and expect that the formation of this strategic alliance with Ondeo will enable us to diversify the use of our technology into other key areas of application within the industry.

So far our focus has been on the upstream side of the oil industry.

Working with Ondeo will allow SAS to penetrate the downstream application areas.

In addition the process developed by Ondeo and SAS is applicable to many types of oil contaminated wastes and both partners are committed to expanding the process and applied technology to other areas of the oil and gas and other industry sectors.' SAS has been supplying micro-emulsion cleaning products to the global oil and gas industry, primarily in the UK sector of the North Sea, for over 3 years.

The technology has been used in a number of key application areas including WBCU displacements, mud pit cleaning, rigwash applications and in onshore slops treatment.

Thus far the technology has set new industry standards in levels of cleaning efficiency and in environmental performance capabilities, efficiency and in environmental performance capabilities typically reducing the volume of oil contaminated hazardous wastes produced in these cleaning applications by 70 - 100%.

Significant time, HSandE advantages and related cost savings to operators accompany the benefits of implementing the technology on the site of waste production.