Oil is nasty stuff. It is full of various toxic chemicals which you really don’t want to have on you, your wild life or your beaches. The question is, what do you do with it when you spill an estimated 5.16 million barrels (based on a 60K barrels per day) into an area where there are lots and lots of beaches for it was up on?
Sadly the main concept for dealing with spilled oil is to let it "weather" which means it breaks down into small droplets, gets eaten by bacteria and is generally sent to the bottom of the sea where we can’t see it so we don’t worry about it. This does nothing in terms of getting the toxic chemicals out of the water, but there is a hell of a lot of water in the oceans and there is toxic crap from other sources, so we don’t sweat it as much as we should.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
But for all the vintage ‘70’s tech that we use to try to keep the oil off the beaches, some of it does reach the shore. It is in the form or tar balls and so-called mousse (an oil sea water emulsion). When that happens you can’t just leave it there, like on the ocean floor, after all there is a tourist industry to consider (as well as wild life refuges, critical habitat and productive fishing grounds close to shore). At this point you have to go and collect that oily waste, then what happens to it?
A lot depends on how much contaminated material you are dealing with. If there is a large amount, it is usually sent to some kind of holding facility so the waste can be evaluated and then sent to the appropriate disposal site. As of the 24th of June BP had removed in excess of 760 tons of sand and oiled debris. Since the efforts have only gotten large and the number of beaches affected has grown it is reasonable to assume that by now they have removed over 1,500 tons of waste and are continuing to generate tons more per day.
You are really not going to like what happens next. There are three options for this oily waste (which includes the "sorbent" booms, the tar balls, oiled sand and flotsam). The first method for solid oiled waste is what is called direct disposal. It is what it says, they basically take it to a landfill and dump it there. There are regulations for what type of landfill can take this kind of waste, but since there is a lot of oiled waste that comes from our industrial society it is not like there is not tons of the stuff put into landfills everyday.
To handle this type of waste the landfill has to be lined with an impermeable membrane. To over-simplify it is a giant baggy under the landfill that prevents any thing from leaking into the ground water. These are actually pretty sophisticated multi-layer systems which work quite well. Still the oily waste is just mixed with other household and wastes and then dumped in the ground, hopefully to stay there forever.
Another option is to incinerate the waste. This is not as easy as just lighting it on fire, as by the time the oil reaches the beach most of the volatiles have evaporated off. Most often oily waste is incarnated in a rotary kiln. This is an industrial machine that has two stages of combustion, one in the kiln when the waste heated and kept moving, the other in the secondary combustion chamber, which incinerates the gas produced in the kiln. Unfortunately this is not exactly what you would call portable, though there are some smaller versions that can be brought to the spill site. The good news is that that it gets rid of most of the toxic stuff (it breaks down at the high temperatures used, and others are scrubbed in the flue) but it does produce carbon dioxide which doesn’t really help with our ongoing climate change problem.
The last option is what is called "land farming". This process takes the oily waste to a section of empty land and then spreads it out to be biodegraded. This is not really an option for a spill the size of the Deepwater Horizon, as the land has to be low value, it takes a lot of space and up to three years before the oil is fully biodegraded. This also leaves a lot of toxic crap on and in the soil.
Back in June it was reported that BP was not properly handling the waste they were collecting; they were not evaluating the waste and just sending it off to landfills. The EPA has put more than a little smack down on them on this issue. On June 29th the EPA issued a pretty tough set of rules and reporting requirements for BP in terms of their handling of the waste generated from the spill.
In addition to reminding BP that is it required to follow all Federal, State and Local laws in the disposal of this waste, the EPA required that BP guarantee full access to all facilities where the waste would be stored or disposed of. It also required testing for toxicity levels weekly at every storage facility prior to disposal, with the information to be e-mailed to them no later than one day after the results are back.
The final requirement was a tracking system that would allow the EPA to know where and how the oil was disposed of. This includes all the oil collected at sea as well as on the shore. It is required to be updated daily to the EPA as well as on-line posting of flow charts of where the waste was collected, where it went before disposal and where it was disposed of.
Unlike the ill-fated and industry captured Minerals Management Service, EPA does not have a hands off view when it comes to major polluters. It will be the EPA that decides if the fine per barrel is $1,110 or $4,300. That is a huge difference when we are talking as many as 5 million barrels spilled. It is the difference between 5.67 billion in fines and 22.2 billion. BP really wants to do what it can to look competent and cooperative with the EPA since they are the ones that are holding a huge hammer over their heads.
Like all regulatory issues there is time for the company to reply or suggest changes in the plan and that is where we are today. For all that the EPA has a sword of Damocles over their head, BP has shown a level of arrogance that is nothing short of stunning. It is likely they will try to skirt or slow walk the compliance with this directive.
While it is good that the EPA is really looking at BP’s practices the real problem is that we don’t do much with spilled oil other than bury or burn it. Like all the other technologies involved in cleaning up an oil spill we have not spent a much time or effort in finding ways to dispose of the weathered oil and tar balls that wash up on the shore. Is it just me or is that another reason we should be spending the 4 billion or so a year that we subsidize the oil industry with on renewable and clean forms of energy?
The floor is yours.