Oil recycling plant, Malta – Removal of VOC and H25 Emissions

Whilst recycling is now championed by everybody as good for the environment, recycling processes themselves can sometimes cause environmental problems.

This was certainly the case in Malta, where a pioneering recycling project undertaken by the Waste Oil Company Limited was creating hydrogen sulphide emissions that were escaping into the atmosphere - a state of affairs not at all appreciated by local businesses and residents. Under pressure to do something about the problem, the company contacted Simdean, one of the UK’s leading pollution control specialists.

Part of Malta’s Falzon Group, the Waste Oil Company collects waste oil, bilge water and ballast from all sectors of the marine industry for recycling at its stateof-the-art Maltese facility.


As part of the recycling process, hydrogen sulphide is produced as a volatile emission. In emptying tanks and centrifuging the oil to remove impurities, the hydrogen sulphide was seaping out.

Following site visits and discussions with Waste Oil’s management, Simdean’s in-house teams developed systems to remove the pollutants, fabricated the equipment at its UK manufacturing centre in Warwick and shipped everything to Malta. Simdean installers
then fully fitted and commissioned the system. To ensure the most effective scrubber design, Simdean worked with American specialists Lamtec Products Inc.

Results from the commissioning showed a scrubbing efficiency of over 99%, bringing the facility’s pollution problems completely under control.