ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,370,586, issued on July 29.
"Treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated materials" was invented by Mark Batt-Rawden (Woking, Great Britain) and Michael Levey (Westhill, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of treating contaminated materials such as oil and gas production waste sludges to recover crude oil hydrocarbons. The method includes the inversion of water-in-oil emulsions, and subsequent separation steps. These may involve the separation and removal of asphaltenes, petroleum waxes and/or solid particles from the crude oil hydrocarbons. The treatment method uses the physical phenomena of hydrodynamic cavitation and hydra...