MOP – Maximum Oil Pickup
The Planet’s Only Cradle-to-Cradle Green Oil Spill Product Happens to be the Best Too.
One of the biggest challenges faced by green products is the common misperception that by creating a sustainable product you must sacrifice quality and effectiveness in the process.
Not so with Maximum Oil Pickup. In fact, I’d wager that MOP, and its compliment of deployment products, is the most effective, environmentally sound, invention to date for rapidly mitigating oil spills of any size from the Exxon Valdez to your garage.
From a sustainability perspective, one of the things that makes MOP even more intriguing is that it is a cradle-to-cradle green product. Created by recycling an otherwise-unrecycled* fiber product in a plant powered by hydro electric energy, the production of the MOP sorbent (the name for the oil spill cleanup product) is all created, from beginning to end with green technology and green energy.
Certified in 2008 by the EPA and Environment Canada for oil spill cleanup on both land and water, MOP is one of the few products capable of providing mitigation in both environments.
About the (AB)Sorbent
The MOP sorbent comes in two forms one optimized for land cleanup and one optimized for water cleanup. Using a patented process involving biodegradable materials the final product makes the sorbent Oleophyllic (oil loving/absorbant) and hydrophobic (water hating/repelling). The moment that the sorbent is spread on the oil spill on land or water, it sucks up the oil and repels the water. This means that as the sorbent is cleaned up only oil is captured with it.
Using any one of several different processes, the oil can then be extracted for reuse from the sorbent and the sorbent can be burned as fuel. Extraction yields 95% of the usable oil. MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc. (the company name) is currently designing a carbon negative biomass energy system which will be able to burn the used sorbent. One 20lb bag of MOP will capture as much as 600 lbs of oil.
Just what does this mean for the companies that deploy the MOP system? To begin with it means that they can stress the sustainable nature of the oil recovery process they use. They can also recover the oil and use or sell it. For a recovery company, this means they add an entirely new profit center to their operations. They charge for the recovery and mitigation and then they are able to sell the recovered product. It’s the best of all possible worlds.
For shippers, drillers, refineries and others in the oil drilling, moving or refining business, they have a mitigation system that offers rapid deployment, exceedingly effective cleanup, oil consumption for small amounts of oil missed in any cleanup and recovery of the product. Again, the best of all possible worlds.
Rapid Response Capabilities and Delivery Systems
Since development of the sorbent is only part of the solution, the folks at MOP Environmental Solutions have been working on a whole host of delivery systems for the sorbent, including: booms, pillows, loose material and the fabled MOP Canon. The MOP Canon looks a little like the offspring of a vacuum cleaner and an artillery gun, but operates like an air canon, shooting the loose dry sorbent out as a speed of 150 MPH and spreading it evenly over a distance of 50 feet.
According to President Charles Diamond, “In a series of tests designed to evaluate the speed of deployment, the company found that one MOP canon could apply enough MOP to neutralize the harmful effects of an oil spill at a rate of at least 1,000 bbl/hr. “That’s a conservative estimate, and it can be as high as 1,500 bbl in one hour’s time,” Diamond confirms.
According to Diamond 10 MOP canons, placed on fast-moving boats, could completely neutralize an Exxon Valdez-sized spill in about 24 hours.”
Different deployment scenarios exist depending on the weather conditions. “We can spray MOP on top of a spill if the weather is cooperative,” says Diamond. “Where more difficult weather patterns exist, we have a deployment method that allows us to bring our product in underneath the spill, essentially bubbling it up into the spill.”
Pickup onshore can be performed with shovels, heavy equipment and hand implements. Offshore pickup can be performed with skimmers dragged behind a boat.
MOP’s “301” land sorbent is optimized for land use and contains a fine grit additive that immediately restores traction and safe footing on hard, slippery surfaces.
Product Cost, Storage and other Factors.
Already competitive on a volume basis, the level of product efficiency, and the ability to reuse the spent sorbent for fuel, result in a significant reduction in remediation costs, according to Diamond. “There are savings both in the low cost of the product itself, and in the operation. Because MOP has a much higher pickup ratio than alternatives like clay, MOP uses one-tenth as much space for storage and is much easier to handle. Imagine one worker carrying two 20-lbm bags of MOP versus two workers unloading a ½-ton pickup truck loaded with 25 to 40 bags of clay for the same oil spill.”
MOP is also lightweight and has a unit cost that is less than one-third the cost of clay. “Arguably the most important feature of MOP is the option of 95% oil recovery for as little as USD 0.25 per gallon and subsequent elimination of hazmat disposal cost. What was formerly on the expense side of the ledger is transferred to the bottom line as profit instead.” according to Diamond.
MOP Environmental Solutions has several expansion plans in the works for MOP this year including an entire value added line of spill kits for every conceivable need.
Diamond is optimistic that the MOP Environmental Solution’s holistic approach to oil remediation will be a positive draw for any operator facing the potential for oil spills in any process. “This technology could be seen as taking a very negative environmental event, an oil spill, and turning it into a positive.
In the first place, you’re intercepting a material [the Fiber-based starting material from a fiber-manufacturing process] that normally would not have a recycling path,” he continues. “You give it a recycling path by converting it to MOP, and then apply it in the field to solve an environmental problem without creating any additional waste streams and minimal by-products. Essentially, you’re taking a problem material and using it to solve a bigger problem.”
For more information about MOP and other remediation technologies, visit www.mopenvironmental.com.
* an otherwise-unrecycled product in sustainability jargon is called a “recovered material” meaning that it is an item for which no other market currently exists in the waste stream. The US EPA has made the use of recovered materials among its highest priorities in recycling guidelines because recycling of these materials can play a significant role in reducing the waste stream.
Wayne D. King is President of Moosewood Communications and Editor of “Greener Minds” a sustainability Blog found at http://www.GreenerMinds.Blogspot.com.
Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/the-planets-only-cradletocradle-green-oil-spill-product-1246956.html
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