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Aqua-Guard’s Latin American team responds to Refinery oil spill

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Paco Jimenez  |  10779 Views

Aqua-Guard’s Latin American team responds to refinery oil spill with RBS TRITON™ state-of-the-art skimming and pumping technology


In mid-May, a storage tank in a Caribbean refinery ruptured and leaked 4,000 bbls of gasoline into its bund-walled containment area, creating a hazardous situation with the potential of explosion and fire.

Aqua-Guard’s team quickly responded with an RBS TRITON™150T system (emergency response trailer).

The skimming system was moved close to the spill location where a crane from the trailer lowered a submersible pump (OLP-240) from the RBS TRITON™ 150 skimming head into the hazardous slurry of gasoline mixed with heavy hydrocarbons, mud and water.

Aqua-Guard’s team then set up temporary storage tanks approximately 1 km away from the “hazardous zone” and pumped the slurry from the bund walls into a temporary storage tank (FASTANK). This slurry was then pumped from the FASTANK by two of Aqua-Guard’s 2” submersible pumps to much larger storage tanks for eventual treatment.

The operation was completed in 3 days with more than 4,000 barrels of the slurry being removed from the bund wall to safe storage.

This operation shows the true versatility of Aqua-Guard’s RBS TRITON™ oil skimming systems with the RBS TRITON™ 150T (trailer) unit being used as both an oil skimmer and pumping system when needed.

Aqua-Guard’s RBS TRITON™ technology was instrumental in avoiding a potentially dangerous situation.