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As happens many times a day, an accident occurs where fuel is released into the environment.  On this December morning a truck was involved in an accident at an intersection in Wylie, Texas.  A fuel tank containing 50 gallons diesel fuel was ruptured.  Prior to the arrival of the fire department the fuel contamination was spread by other vehicles tracking through the fuel and some of the fuel had even leaked into the storm drain.  By the time the first fire truck had arrived the spill of slick diesel fuel covered an area of 20' by 100'.

Diesel fuel covering the roadway and tracked through the street by traffic 

The first action of the responding crew was to estimate the amount of fuel spilled into the environment.  The crew had an option to either educt a 2% concentration of OSE II into the sprayer or drop the water level in the water tank to a level where a 50:1concentration of water to OSE II could be achieved.  Then the entire tank of the OSE II and water mixture could be used on the spill.  Because of the amount of the spill and water remaining in the tank it was easier to just dump off some of the water and mix directly in the tank.

Pouring OSE II directly into onboard water tank

Fire fighters then covered the spill area with a power fog containing the OSE II and water mixture.  Immediately the diesel fuel could be seen separating from the concrete as the mixture began soluliblizing and emulsifying the fuel.  This is the first stage in the cleanup process by which the OSE II mixture attaches to the hydrocarbon and prevents it from adhering to other surfaces.

The spilled fuel is fogged by the OSE II and water mixture

The mixture of OSE II and water was also sprayed into the storm drain to deal with any contaminates that had already left the road surface.  Since the OSE II attaches itself to the hydrocarbon the remediation of the spill continues even if carried away by flowing water.

The entire spill was sprayed in about 5 minutes

Even piled up dirt was sprayed to remove the hydrocarbons

The mixture was allowed to stand for 20 minutes