Systems, Devices and Equipment

Introduction

Diluted bitumen (dilbit) is a unique oil of Canada and can be transported to all over the world. One environmental impact is that once it is spilled to an aquatic environment it may attach solids in water to form a sunken oil which may increase the cleanup cost dramatically. For example, in the 2010 Kalamazoo dilbit spill cleanup, Enbridge has spent more than one billion dollars in three years rather than the original estimation of 5 Million dollars.

Challenges

One challenge for the cleanup of spilled dilbit is the time-consuming locating process of the sunken oil, even using the most efficient “poling” technique. The second challenge is the dewatering of the huge amount of water and sand together with the sunken oil. The third challenge is that only small amount of vacuumed sucked liquid from the thin slick dilbit collection is oil. The fourth challenge is that the cleanup waste of an oil spill could be up to 10 folds of the spill and lime hardening is a common process before the waste can be land-filled.

Solutions

We provide systems, devices and equipment to combat the challenges in the dilbit spill response, which could be employed in other applications such as oil sand tailings facility management.

Product list

Real-time sunken oil mapping system. Matrix sensors are used to scan a suspected pad under the pre-set GPS route and the detection data are sent to the SaaS cloud with wireless transmission. The mapping data can be displayed on any users’ personal cell phone right away via a web app as shown on the below image. The total mapping time is around 100 folds shorter than the “poling” technique.

High flow-rate dewatering devices. The devices provide 2-10 folds of drainage flow-rate of geobags at similar sizes.
Water-free Slick Skimmers. The skimmers collect dilbit thin slick without water.
Selective sunken oil collectors. They selectively collect sunken oil rather than huge amount of uncontaminated water and sands together.

Dilbit spill response waste decontamination system. It is a movable system to decontaminate most of the waste of a typical dilbit spill response. It does not require a lime hardening process while provide clean fuel oils as a byproduct.
Specialty fabrication products. We provide dewatering and decontamination materials and products such as dewatering bags for field operation waste.