Effectiveness testing of spill-treating agents

Laboratory effectiveness tests are described for four classes of spill-treating agents; solidifiers, demulsifying agents, surface-washing agents and dispersants. Many treating agents in these four categories have been tested for effectiveness and the results are presented here.

Solidifiers orgelling agents solidify oil, requiring a large amount of agent to solidify oil—ranging between 16% by weight, to over 200%. Emulsion breakers prevent or reverse the formation of water-in-oil emulsions. A newly-developed effectiveness test shows that only one product is highly effective: however, many products will work, but require large amounts of spill-treating agent.

Surfactant-containing materials are of two types, surface-washing agents and dispersants. Testing has shown that an agent that is a good dispersant is conversely a poor surface-washing agent, and vice versa. Tests of surfacewashing agents show that only a few agents have effectiveness of 25–40%, where this effectiveness is the percentage of heavy oil removed from a test surface. Results using the ‘swirling flask’ test for dispersant effectiveness are reported. Heavy oils show effectiveness values of about 1%, medium crudes of about 10%, light crude oils of about 30% and very light oils of about 90%.