Oceans-ESU - Smart Development Project

Oceans-ESU - Case Studies

For more info e-mail: info@oceans-esu.com.

Smart Development Project:-

Job Title: Development and market implementation of a system for the bio-treatment of interceptor waste
Industry: Petrochemical
Clients: UK DTI & BP-Amoco
Sites: Throughout the United Kingdom

The Challenge

Over 2 billion metric tons of petroleum is produced per year worldwide and large amounts of petroleum end up polluting both terrestrial and marine environments.

Low-level routine discharges (such as urban runoff account) for over 90% of the total petroleum hydrocarbon discharges. Accidents such as tanker disasters, pipeline breaks and well blowouts account for less than 10% of these discharges.

The use of interceptors on petrol station forecourts is costly and environmentally unsustainable practice. Periodic emptying of the content is, itself, a recurring cost throughout the life of an interceptor, and may also liable to landfill tax.

In addition, the resulting water that passes to surface drainage still contains polluting hydrocarbons. Since almost every petrol station in the country uses interceptor based waste management, the overall scale of this pollution is significant. As such, pressure on the industry to find an alternative is increasing, forcing imminent change to current disposal practices.

The Solution

Oceans-ESU are providers of showcase reed bed treatment systems to remediate hydrocarbon-contaminated land and water. In March 1998, we won a £70,000 DTI 'SMART' Award to develop a new reed bed technology to solve the treatment problems arising from hydrocarbon-contaminated wastewater from petrol station forecourts.

During the subsequent 16 month feasibility study we developed a prototype treatment. In 1999, we were awarded a second ’SMART’ Innovation Grant to partially fund an ambitious £300,000 development project to develop the prototype to marketable stage.

The Benefits

The reed tubs have consistently out-performed European standards for a class 1 separator by at least one order of magnitude.
Since winning the ’SMART’ Innovation Award, the project has attracted substantial interest from the media, having featured on both BBC television and in the press.
The civil engineering aspects of the product have been developed in close association with the APEA and the HSE. The reed tub system operates as a gravity-fed, pump-free system. It conforms to, or exceeds, the design standards laid out by APEA and the IP.
The treatment results, cost savings, PR benefits and landscaping value of the system speak for themselves.

Further Information

Download case study sheet in Acrobat PDF format

The Project in Action
More on Reed Beds

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