US remediation firm Reterro, which specialises in eliminating hydrocarbon and CVOC contamination from soil and ongoing waste streams, announced on 14 December that it has received its first contract in the waste-stream business. The customer is a Texas-based facility owned by one of the world’s most prominent recyclers of spent petroleum refinery catalysts and producers of ferroalloys.
The project involves removing benzene (a component of products derived from petroleum) from precious metals from catalytic converters. Substantial environmental and economic benefits can be brought to the location, says the firm, particularly by enabling the reuse of high-value metals. The corporate customer, which has served the oil refinery industry for several decades, employs proprietary processes to recover molybdenum, vanadium, nickel, cobalt and alumina products. Metals recovered by Reterro’s technology from spent catalysts are used in the production of a wide range of high-purity specialty products.
Secret sauce
Reterro’s proprietary methodology features “a small on-site footprint” and a flameless process that is said to deliver immediate certainty in safe waste-stream and soil remediation. “The methodology constitutes the quickest, most cost-effective, cleanest and most compliant route to preventing ongoing contamination and unlocking the greatest value in previously unusable contaminated sites,” according to a Reterro press release.
The Reterro Principle™ – as the remediation solution is branded – is also claimed to be the only practically deployable solution for this kind of remediation in space-constrained, highly populated areas. It can reportedly clean tons of soil in hours to non-detect levels.
The contract is the most recent project to be managed by Reterro’s dedicated practice designed to address the expanding requirements of the oil- and gas-industry in the Texas-Oklahoma energy corridor. Last year, Reterro formed an integrated team of engineers, project managers and customer representatives specifically to serve the Texas-Oklahoma area. The central-US corridor contains thousands of oil and gas sites related to exploration, refining, transportation and other infrastructure that serves as the backbone of the energy industry.
