Oil Pollution Stops Here

Approximately 1% of all crude oil extracted from the Earth is discarded by the Oil and Maritime industries as waste sludge; usually dumped in the ocean by ships, in open sludge lagoons by Oil Producers, or simply incinerated, generating colossal quantities of greenhouse gases. Currently, there is no environmental disposal route; some 80% of the pollution from ships is caused by operational oil discharges into the sea. In Canada the sludge lagoons from oil production are so large they are visible from space; the estimated cost of clean-up, is circa $260 Billion. Sullom-Voe, UK-Shetlands has a 300,000-tonne oil sludge lagoon where tankers have been disgorging their waste sludge over many years.

Envorem has developed a unique, disruptive, and green technology to clean sludge and recover the oil for recycling using a well understood, but little known, physical property of water. Patent applied for and IP Audit completed: we have freedom to operate.

Recycling oil presents no environmental conflict; as opposed to sequestrating, recycling reduces crude oil demand and the environmental impact of extraction. (See Environmental Dichotomy section in Project Delivery Appendix). If the global legacy sludges were incinerated, they would generate more CO2 than 45 million flights from London to New York.

Our vision: minimise environmental damage from sludges during the long transition from fossil fuel. Initially targeting oil-industry wastes, just one Envorem machine, compared to incineration, can save every year the same CO2 as absorbed by 6% of all the UK's forests.

Incorporated in January 2019, Envorem developed and subsequently demonstrated its technology at lab scale to the State oil companies of Oman (PDO) and Kuwait (KOC). By December 2019, after raising equity against an order for a field trial from PDO, Envorem designed, built, and deployed to Oman, a substantial (TRL6/7) pilot system. By March 2020, Envorem had field-proven, that it could clean sludge for 40% less cost than incineration, at 10 times the speed, without creating emissions whilst recovering 99% of the oil for recycling.

This means for the Maritime and Oil Industries, the technology delivers a financial and environmental incentive to stop polluting and clean up legacy deposits.

An Innovate-UK-SBRI2 grant completed in April 2021 funded the outline design of a production prototype. Funds are now sought for the next critical development stage, to construct this production prototype, capable of deployment and revenue generation.