The reluctance of oil and water to mix does not mean they are a snap to separate. The separation process used during environmental cleanups and industrial applications often relies on practices that eat lots of time and use plenty of space.

Nu-Corp International Technologies Inc., of Byhalia, Miss., has developed the Xpak systems to use in situations where a traditional oil and water separation process -- gravity flow separation -- is used. Xpak´s pressurized applications are designed to reclaim the oil quickly and turn it into a product that can be sold to oil recyclers instead of hauled away as an expense, said John Sill Sr., Nu-Corp´s vice president of technical services.

Nu-Corp has exclusive manufacturing and marketing rights to the technology behind its Xpak system through a joint venture with Advanced Petroleum Technologies Inc., which holds the patent.

"We´re targeting areas wherever there is the problem of oil and water," Sill said. "If there is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we can go out and collect it quickly -- 15,000 barrels´ worth a day. The system is scalable, and it can be used in industry cleanup to reclaim oil to be recycled. It can be used any place where people need to have high efficient separation of two immiscible fluids."

An oil recycler who can get a product where 90 percent of the oil and water have been separated will take the product at no cost because it can be further processed and sold. If the oil mixture moves into the range of 95 percent separated, recyclers will pay to get it from the companies that generate it, Sill said.

The big difference between Nu-Corp´s method and other separation techniques lies in its approach to the waste stream.

"From a conceptual basis, it´s a very different paradigm," said John Plodinec, director of the Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analysis Laboratory, an independent research center based in Starkville, Miss., affiliated with the engineering college at Mississippi State University.

"What´s conventionally done is people assume they have two liquids, the oil and the water, and somehow they want them to separate; they use gravity and usually big equipment to do this," Plodinec said. "The Xpak design makes a different assumption -- that what you have are droplets of oil interspersed in the aqueous fluid. Rather than treat the oil as another liquid, they treat the droplets as particles, and they separate them as particles."

Nu-Corp signed a contract with the lab, known as DIAL, to independently test its process, Plodinec said. "Our customers come to us and pay us," he said. "If they don´t like the report we write, that´s their problem. We do the testing, and the results are theirs to do with what they want."

From oil spill cleanup to processing residual oils, such as those used as cutting fluids in industrial plants, Xpak has tested well, he said. The worst separation has yielded about 97 percent recovery of the oil, and that was under conditions simulating crude oil recovery.

There are several cost incentives to Xpak as well, Plodinec said.

"There´s at least a factor-of-six advantage in terms of capital costs based on the equipment, and you have an operational cost advantage because you don´t need all the chemicals typically used, so there´s an environmental advantage, too," he said. "In a moderate-size oil field like you might find in Mississippi, we´re talking on the order of about $1.5 million spent on chemicals a year.

"And because we get more oil out of the process, we´ve estimated that for a small oil field, the additional oil alone would pay for the equipment in about five months," Plodinec said.

Sill said the concept of forming a company came about in 1998 after conversations with Helen Greene, an engineer and the patent holder. He had known Greene and her father, Boyd Greene, also an engineer, for years, and they decided to develop a prototype.

"Our first attempt was to separate emulsified diesel fuel in water," Sill said. "The concept was very viable; we got more than 99 percent separation. We moved to a tougher challenge, crude oil emulsified in fresh water, and got better than 97 percent recovery."

From there, it was more development and testing and raising funds to build the equipment, then taking the process to the lab at Mississippi State.

"There is a lot of interest in exploring us because this is brand new," Sill said. "We don´t have a device in the field performing yet because businesses want to see proven performance. No one likes to be first. But if we can be of benefit to [a company], we will install it, prove it to them, and then you can buy it. If we can´t prove that it´s working, we´ll take it out at no cost."

For more information, contact Nu-Corp International Technologies at (662) 838-8311 or visit NuCorpInternational.com.