In many years of corporate/Industrial facility consulting, one of our clients was a major nondestructive testing company in Signal Hill, CA. Their clients were major refineries for inspecting vessels, pipes, valves, and crude oil tanks. Because oil refineries use caustic materials, extreme heat, and high pressure in their daily activities and if pipes, valves, and containments are not continuously inspected and repaired, severe ruptures and explosions can occur.

In consulting with this innovative firm, they continually complained about the inspection problems caused by hard-to-remove tank bottom sludge which accumulates over time in refinery and production field crude oil storage tanks. Periodically, these tanks must be emptied and inspected as the bottoms become seriously corroded and potentially fail, causing millions of dollars of environmental damage and inspecting the tanks is a very difficult and dangerous task. Unless the tank bottom is completely clean, oil tanks are not only very difficult to accurately inspect, they are impossible to repair problem areas. A common complaint is the fact that presently used cleaning methods are ineffective and extremely expensive.

As a result, we were asked to help in the search for a more efficient method of removing sludge and cleaning the tank floor. We discovered that, for decades, there had been no major improvements in the methods used to clean or dispose of the heavy tank bottom sludge.

Life is filled with coincidences and one of our other clients had retained a world respected nano-molecular scientist who had saved their firm millions of dollars. So, we contacted him to attempt to gain insight into the reason why this sludge is so problematic. He explained that hydrocarbons are strongly attracted to inorganic surfaces because of the polarized surface charges inherent in both organic oil and inorganic (steel) containments. His quick analysis was that the key to breaking the bond that causes the problem was to develop a process that would change the negative vs positive surface charges that binds them. He made a few suggestions as to how this could be done and so we retained him to develop such a product. This quest ultimately led to a series of applied research projects and the development of a safe to use, water-based product we named Petromax. In every use for which it is applied, It is a dramatic improvement over any method now used to removing hydrocarbons from inorganic surfaces.

Working with a number of customers in determining other unresolved waste and production issues caused by hydrocarbon attachment where it causes expensive problems, a complete line of products with specific problem-solving characteristics has been developed and its use is described herein. All Petromax formulas have been thoroughly tested at the University of Southern California Environmental Lab and independently by all members of our Science Advisory Board.