Oil Spill Defense � Custom Solutions - Preventing Pollution For A Cleaner Environment

Special Problems - Special Solutions

Many businesses face water problems that cannot be easily solved by a single-vector solution. Petro Barrier Systems is pleased to work with you to find a comprehensive solution to the special problems you face, and build a customized system on site to resolve them. The following are a few of the special challenges that our company has faced in the past, and the solutions that are operating successfully in the field today:

Yacht Club (British Columbia, Canada):

The challenge: Marine paints are often high in copper to help prevent fouling of boat hulls, and washing boats after they have been pulled from the water can release this copper into the water system along with pigments and other chemicals. This problem was compounded for the site due to the high alge content of the local river water, and a large proportion of extremely fine silt that did not settle in a reasonable length of time. To top this off, the portion of the yacht club where cleaning was performed was already well developed and did not have space available to accomadate a treatment system with a large footprint.

The solution: A modified version of the MarineGuard P3 system. When a boat was lifted from the water and rinsed off, the washwater would be collected in a large sump, and emptied from there into 45-gallon plastic drums as the sump filled. The water would then be chemically treated while in the drum to cause most of the silt and other solids to precipitate out, collecting in the drum over the course of multiple treatments until sufficient had accumulated for normal disposal. The water was then pumped out of the holding drum, ready for the recycling process. Passing first through a cascading pre-filter to remove any remaining solids as well as some oils and pigments, the water then flows through an oil-water seperator to remove most of the remaining hydrocarbons. Finally, a three-stage set of polishing filters removes the last of the hydrocarbons and any metals disolved in the water. Now purified, the water can either flow to a storage tank prior to reuse, or be safely released back into the river in a state that is actually cleaner than the water normally found there.

Transformer Site (Turks & Caicos):

The challenge: Transformer sites (like many industrial locations) have to be prepared to deal both with slow leaks from equipment as well as sudden large spills in the event of an accident. This transformer site had prepared for these eventualities by erecting concrete holding walls (berms) and routing run-off water to holding ponds and then through an oil-water separator system before being pumped to outlet locations. Concerns were raised, however, that the oil-water separator in use at the site could only reduce oil concentrations to a level that was still in excess of local requirements, and thus declined in usefulness as local rainwater diluted any oil captured within the berms and holding ponds.

The solution: Initially, a set of Berm Barriers were created to be attached directly to the walls of the berms. This allowed water accumulating within the berms to be directly filtered and released, without needing to be pumped to the holding ponds for treatment. In conjunction with this, sets of Pressure Filters were created to attach in-line with existing hoses, allowing the diluted oils left after the oil-water separator to be filtered out to levels around 1 part per million on the way to the outlet locations. These Pressure Filter sets are now operating at pressures up to 100psig and flow rates up to 120 gallons per minute through each Pressure Filter set.