TERI’s Oilzapper technology treats oil contaminated land and sea

teriNew Delhi, 9 February 2017: The massive oil spill in Ennore coast of Chennai last week has affected the livelihoods of fishermen and still continues to pose an alarming threat to the aquatic biodiversity along the coast. This is an ecological disaster that needs to be managed most sensitively.

Currently, the oil spill in the collision site at Chennai coast is being treated through chemical dispersant and through manual cleaning processes. However, this leads to generation of a substantial amount of oily sludge, which also poses a serious threat to the environment and needs to be eradicated completely. The chemical dispersants that are usually used to remove oil spill from sea surface may not be the best solution available because most of chemical dispersants are recalcitrant and toxic and continue to be invisibly present in the water. However, TERI’s ‘Oilzapper’ technology that can significantly assist in the treatment of the oily sludge through an ex-situ operation.

‘Oilzapper’ is a microbial powder that is a cocktail of five different degrading microbes that feed on oil by breaking the different fractions of the complex petroleum hydrocarbon oil. The product is formulated in a manner that allows its effective large-scale implication in different oil contaminated environments – terrestrial as well as aquatic environments. So far Oilzapper has been applied in 4 lakh cubic metre of soil in India, including sites in the oil fields of Gujarat and Assam.

The patent for Oilzapper is held by a joint venture between ONGC and TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL). It was successfully used during the clean-up of the last oil spill in Mumbai in August 2010.

Faceinews.com

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