General Purpose spill cleanup product

A General Purpose Cleanup Product is a spill cleanup product that can be used for oil & water based spills.

Typically used on:

1. Cleaning chemicals.
2. Oils & fuels
3. Coolants
4. Paints
5. Solvents
6. Mild acids & alkaline products.
7. Foodstuffs (e.g. milk, juice, sauces etc.)

What everyone needs to understand is that these absorbent products have their place but they won’t work as well as a specialist sorbent.

Organic Biodegradable Sock

The reason for this is because oil spill cleanup products are ‘hyrdophobic’ which means they don’t like water. In the case of polypropylene products the ‘plastic’ material used to make the absorbent is extruded in very long ‘string like’ filaments about the diameter of a human hair. This process is known as melt blown. Each molecule along each filament has a spare ‘valence’ bond which has a small electrostatic charge which attracts the oil or fuel and makes it stick to the polypropylene and that’s how it ‘picks up’ the oil.

By adding a charge to the polypropylene absorbents can be manufactured that will sorb chemical spills. Chemical pads work in exactly the same way as oil absorbent pads. Small charges all along the along the filaments that attract and chemicals stick to the polypropylene pad.

General purpose spill cleanup products have some bonds for both hydrocarbons (oil and fuel based products) and chemicals (usually chemicals are more water based in nature). Because they have bonds oil spills and chemical spills they simply can’t soak up as much of one type of either spill (say oil) as a specialist ‘oil specific’ absorbent pads can because roughly half the bonds are for oil and half are for water based products.

The take home message here is it is often less expensive to design your own spill kit or spill station and make sure it contains the absorbent products that will help you the most should you need spill containment. It is unwise to just order general purpose absorbent pads or rolls because it might seem easier. If you have to use twice as much product for every spill clean then you will end up spending more on your spill management products than you need to.