The Proven Solution for Cleaning Up Oil Spills (II)

 

One of the most popular uses for PRP is the BioSok Bilge Maintenance System. It allows boaters to clean up small spills. Boats take on water, either from rain, washing, or waves splashing over the sides. This water often mixes with cleaning fluids, and oil and gas from a boat’s motor. The water collects in a bilge, the area inside a boat’s bottom designed to collect and hold the errant water. A bilge needs to be pumped overboard regularly to prevent the boat from taking on too much water. This bilge water, though, is often contaminated.

The BioSok is a small, 3- by 10-inch “sock” with PRP encased in polypropylene that floats in the bilge, absorbing and bioremediating any hydrocarbons, thus, decontaminating the water. Each BioSok can immediately absorb twice its weight and can degrade more than 20 times its weight in oil over time. One BioSok will generally last for an entire boating season. It requires no maintenance or monitoring, and it safely eliminates the pollutants and fumes associated with spilled oil and gasoline.

The U.S. Coast Guard is always on the prowl for any boaters who expel oil-contaminated water from their bilges. Fines are often thousands of dollars, which makes sense, knowing that every year bilge cleaning and other ship operations release millions of gallons of oil into navigable waters from thousands of discharges of just a few gallons each. The BioSok is such an effective antidote to polluted bilge water, that even the Coast Guard has used it on its boats.

UniRemInc also manufactures the BioBoom, essentially a longer BioSok that can be used to enclose larger oil spills. It is especially effective for emergency containment of spilled oil in large areas, like in marinas, ponds, lakes, or open waters; but can also be effective in tanks, storm runoff systems, electrical utility vaults, and anywhere that requires the containment, absorption, and biodegredation of leaking petroleum hydrocarbons. The BioBoom acts as a perimeter around spills and prevents them from spreading. The snake-like tube is 3 inches in diameter and can be produced at any length up to 10 feet.

The WellBoom facilitates groundwater monitoring by absorbing floating petroleum more effectively and less expensively than traditional bailing methods. UniRemInc makes the standard WellBoom by filling a weighted polypropylene sock, 36 inches long and up to 3 inches in diameter, with PRP. The product is then lowered into the groundwater monitoring wells where it absorbs and accelerates the biodegradation of any floating petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants. WellBoom is typically used at petroleum storage facilities, gasoline stations, and other locations where there is a potential for groundwater contamination.

OilBuster is yet another product using PRP that UniRemInc has developed. It is the beeswax PRP mixed with several grades of ground corncob and is for use on land or hard surfaces where no natural microbial population is present. It is ideal for cleaning oil spills that have not yet reached the water and that hopefully never will.

PRP has proven effective in facilities conducting railroad repair, where ballasts, ties, and the ground can be saturated with diesel fuel and oil. It is a safe, cost- effective way for these types of contaminated facilities to get quick results that restore the environment and help them avoid the steep U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fines.

UniRemInc is continuing to find uses for this amazing bioremediation technology and to supply consumers and industry with safe, natural, and effective ways to keep oil out of our water.