Mumbai: It is time to start cleaning up
the beaches when the oil spill is freshly entrapped into the
sand and silt using the Sand and Silt Washing Reactors (SSWR),
said an environmental expert from Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay (IIT-B) here.
It is important to skim the floating oil in the ocean but
at the same time it is equally important to clean up the
beaches without wasting time, Dr Shyam Asolekar, Professor,
Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering of IIT-B who
has developed SSWR technology said today.
"Sooner the better as the oil will get weathered by
various atmospheric factors and then it is difficult to
dissolve," he said.
The SSWR can be of five tonne or 10 tonne capacity and
will take 36 to 48 hours for each batch load to clean up the
sand. The cleaned sand will be put back in its place, Asolekar
who has developed the technology said.
Asked whether this technology has been used earlier, the
environment engineer said, ONGC had called him in mid-1990s
when it had experienced leakage of oily waste water from its
facility in Uran, near Mumbai. As a result, two to six inches
of sand was loaded with oil in and around one kilometre
stretch of the beach. But they never used the technology, he
said.
PTI
