The site
A major refinery with roughly eight feet of heavy oily sludge sitting in the bottom of its primary wastewater holding tank, estimated at about 40,000 barrels of hydrocarbon waste.
Refinery operations were at risk. Lowering the water level, which the refinery needed to do, would have pushed grease and oil concentrations in the wastewater past the limits in the county discharge permit. The tank had also lost close to thirty per cent of its storage capacity to the accumulated sludge. It had to be cleaned.
What cleaning it usually costs
Comparable projects at the same refinery had run to around two million dollars. That figure covered personnel to remove the waste, centrifuge and dry it, and haul more than a thousand tons of hazardous waste out of state for disposal. The company was prepared to try something else if it could keep the total under one and a half million.
What we did
A combination of surfactants and microbial blends was supplied to break down the oily sludge inside the tank, treating the whole volume in place. The surfactants separated the sludge from the oil first, so recoverable oil could be skimmed off and either recycled or put back into product. The microbial blend then brought hydrocarbon levels down until the water was compliant for discharge.
A few weeks, fewer than two people assigned to the tank, and the effluent quality improved on the way out.
What this does and does not show
It shows that a large volume of tank bottom sludge can be treated where it sits, that a meaningful share of it can be recovered as saleable oil rather than paid for as waste, and that the economics of doing it that way are not close.
It does not show that every tank is a candidate. This one had the right sludge chemistry, the refinery could run the process without taking the tank out of service, and there was skimming capacity to recover the separated oil. A tank without those things is a different job.
How the work was done. Delivered through our partnered Houston microbiology and genomics laboratory, which has run this class of work for more than thirty-five years. RAD Microbes LLC was founded in 2024. Cost and recovery figures are the refinery's own, compared against its previous cleaning projects on the same tank.
Start with a discovery call
Every site is different, and a short conversation tells us far more than a sample does. Talk us through what you are dealing with and we will tell you honestly whether biology is the right answer for it. If it is not a fit, we will say so on the call.
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