Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) has been granted a patent for ‘Organic Gelators’ by the Controller of Patent, the Patent Office, Government of India.

A statement by the company said on Thursday that MRPL has developed a new ‘oil gelator chemical’. “In this invention, new organic gel-forming molecules derived from simple and cheaper chemicals have been synthesised and characterised. These molecules exhibit good gelation behaviour when they are exposed to oil spillages. Due to this behaviour, they get solidified quickly. These solidified gels can be easily recovered from the surface of the land or water bodies. It is an effective method to mitigate oil pollution from the environment. About 3-4 per cent of the chemical is required to form a gel on the oil layer,” it said.

The patent gives MRPL the exclusive right to exclude others from copying, manufacturing, selling or importing its invention without company’s permission, it said.

Oil spillages include any spill of crude oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, hydraulic oil, lubricating oil, etc. In case the spillage takes place, then the clean-up action has to contain the spread of the oil spill, and has to recover or remove the floating oil from the water surface.

The statement said that one of the removal methods is to convert the oil film on the water surface into a semi-solid gel and contain the spread, and then remove the jellified oil by using some mechanical exercise. MRPL has now developed a new ‘oil gelator chemical’ for the purpose, it said.

This is the third patent awarded to MRPL. MRPL has patents for ‘Process Distillation of Petroleum Fractions – by using Fuel Gas / Hydrocarbon vapours instead of steam’, and for ‘Oxidative Treatment of Refinery Spent Caustic’, it added.

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