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"OilyNews" Article: The Basics of Oil Skimming—How It Gets Done!
At SkimOil, Inc. we make and sell oil skimmers and oil water separators. The purpose of this OilyNews newsletter is to give you a short overview of oil skimming and the equipment and a few of the ways to get it done… We do NOT usually sell to the spill response contractors, except when there are spills, and unlikely as it is—when they need more of our type skimmers NOW. American companies who have a lot of oil to spill or leak, must have a registered spill plan with the EPA or USCG. These companies who own or handle the oil usually have an agreement with Oil Spill Response organizations (OSRO’s), contractors who have a LOT of trucks and boats stationed all around the country full of spill equipment—on standby. These are usually highly trained professional teams—but the brunt of the work is done by the local labor pool with lower cost manual labor, sometimes with minimum OSHA 40-hour training. People with oil to spill often have their own equipment and trained "First Response Teams," but that’s just until the (OSRO) spill response contractor gets onsite. Often at a spill scene, the on-site coordinators or "agency overseeing things" sometimes decide they need more of a certain type of floating weir skimmers or rotary drum skimmers… WE LIKE THAT, but most of our day to day business is industrial or process type skimming and not needed for SUDDEN SERVICE. Click here to see every skimmer technology available! The oil skimmer business on a daily basis is like most others… long moments of routine—interrupted by short bursts of chaos and madness. We don’t have the time to go into great detail here and now—but we’ll be sending out more "OilyNews" updates on skimming as the BP/Deepwater Horizon exploration rig Gulf oil spill and blowout proceeds—which it’s certain to do. What’s an oil skimmer and how is it different from an oil water separator? Spill response contractor equipment is mostly like our industrial skimmers—just much larger and heavier duty. Selective Floating Skimmers Give You Oil Only! These skimmers give you as little as 3% water—but the Gulf oil right now is being emulsified with up to 50/50 water—YIKES
Case in point: our floating drum skimmers (FDS) float on the surface of the water/oil and the drum (air or hydraulic driven) rotates slowly thru the oil, getting covered with oil, then rotating around then scraped off by a "doctor" blade allowing the oil to flow into the sump where it collects—then gets pumped away. Consider this to be a two part operation—skimming and pumping. Skimming is removing the oil from the surface—and the pumping part moves that oil to storage. If you’re skimming—you gotta’ keep pumping it off or the floating skimmer turn into a submarine. These floating drum skimmers are the most efficient way of moving a LOT of oil FAST—and not give you as much water to deal with. These drum skimmers only need a few inches of water to float in. Even our smallest industrial drum skimmer "the steelmax" which is only 2.5' x 3.5' can skim an amazing 20 gallons of oil per minute—now you can see why you have to keep pumping it out! Very few people have this much oil to skim. Floating drum skimmers are available to skim as much as 200 GPM.
Sometimes as you’ve seen on the news videos—the oil is not a contiguous mass—it’s fragmented and broken up by waves and wind action, making he drum skimmer not so effective. But when it’s in oil, a big drum skimmer is an awesome picture—imagine being able to skim 3-4 barrels of oil per minute (100-200 GPM)—without getting much water! It’s all a function of the large amount of surface area on the drums—as long as they touch the oil. These are serious skimmers. NON-Selective Skimming—
The FWS floating weir skimmer attracts and influences the surface all around the skimmer—it’s a pure surface skimmer. The surface of the liquid is going to be drawn into the mouth or weir and goes down it’s drain which is the suction line to a remote pump. Whatever is on the surface (oil/feathers/fish/trash/water) is going to be drawn into the skimmer sump by the movement of the water or surface flow across the weir. These skimmers don’t have any motor driven rotating elements, BUT they do require use of a remote pump to pump away everything that’s running into that floating surface drain. Make no mistake, these will give you a lot of water to deal with if you have little surface oil—but they are FAST and flow rates can range from a few GPM up to hundreds of gallons per minute. Our FWS that’s 3' x 4' will skim the surface at up to 400 GPM. We can scale that up to 1000 GPM! Click here to see every skimmer technology available!
The floating weir skimmers are also used to skim or remove floating stuff other than oil—such as floating fly ash in power plants, floating duck weed in ponds, grass/ plastic pellets and anything else that floats on the surface and that can be influenced by the motion of water moving across the surface. If this floating weir skimmer is sitting in pure oil—you can move huge amounts of oil fast without getting water along with it! Here are some general application ideas about which skimmer to use where: Floating Oil Skimmers
Hard-Mounted / Installed Skimmers
As always—experience helps with skimmer applications. SkimOil, Inc. has all the skimmer technologies known to man. This is what we do all the time, so we can bring highly specialized knowledge and experience to your requirement—giving you the right technology so we can get it right—the first time. If you need a skimmer—FAST—or in a while: Call 314 579-9755! Please share this edition of the "OilyNews" with a friend by clicking on the "Forward Email" link at the bottom of this newsletter. Next edition of the "OilyNews" will be covering oil water separators. WE LOVE OIL! Call SkimOil at (314) 579-9755 or e-mail: info@skimoil.com |
  
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