Using Moss and Coir Fibre to Soak up Oil Spills

Using sphagnum moss to soak up oil and fuel.

An acquaintance of mine had an unfortunate garden spillage of home heating oil the other day. It came from an incorrectly attached pipe after a boiler replacement and although it wasn’t enough of a spill to contact the EPA, it did still leave a mess.  There was no chance of run off into water or the garden as it was on concrete, but it did highlight just how quickly a natural disaster can happen.  It pays to have some form soaking up equipment to hand just in case something like this goes off without it being spotted quickly. There could have been 1000 litres of oil run into the soil from the tank within minutes and it’d take more than a bag of clay balls to soak that up.  The whole are would need to be cleared and replaced which could cost thousands of euro and if home insurance doesn’t cover you it’s be out of your own pocket.

I have a 25kg of the aforementioned clay balls and they can help to soak up oil from my strimmer of the drops of petrol that come from the mower. This clay resembles cat litter and will need to be mined.  There are a couple of other alternatives we can use now such as cut human hair or straw, but the most eco-friendly seems to be coir fibre.  It’s been used for years as a garden product but has particular absorbent characteristics.

Coir to absorb oil spills

Coir coconut fibre is an all-natural spill absorbent product. One source of the coir ‘greenness’ is the fact it’s made from an entirely renewable resource: coconut husks.

Though many absorbent products on the market today continue to use mined clay as their main ingredient, the need and demand for greener products has found coir to be the alternative.

Coir, at a microscopic level, has hollow channel structures. This forces hydrocarbon spills (like petrol or oil) to be trapped inside the spill absorbent product. Used coir holding fuel spills can be a fuel source for energy producing incinerators and  the coir is biologically stable and free of harmful micro-organisms; therefore, it provides a perfect environment for bio-degrading organisms to absorb the hydrocarbons. 

Coir is the most ecologically sustainable absorbent product ingredient available in certain countries but not here in Ireland as the shipping costs to the environment are huge.  So here at home I’d be more tempted to use something we produce ourselves in huge amounts locally. Sphagnum moss.

Absorbing oil with sphagnum moss

Peat moss, long known as a garden enhancer, hanging basket lining and believed by some to even have healing properties ( it was used widely in the wars to heal wounds), is now being promoted as the best and most ‘environmentally friendly’ way of cleaning up oil spills.

Like coir, the moss-based product cleans up and contains spills on land and water. Sphagnum moss can be used on a wide range of hydrocarbon and chemical spills outside and in the workplace, from diesel oil, petrol and brake fluid leaks, to paint, acetone and ink.

Not all peat moss is suitable for this use and the purification and dehydration of the product is vital for its effectiveness. The sphagnum moss does need some treatment before being ready and if it could be managed sustainably would be a perfect solution for us. The two largest suppliers providing the service in Norway and Canada have  processing plants to separate peat from inert materials, like soil and twigs, and then send it through a dehydration unit that reduces the moisture content to an average of only about 5 percent to 8 percent.

In that form, the peat is ‘activated,’ in that its natural capillaries are seeking to get filled back up.

 Since the dried capillary walls of the cleaned moss are primarily organic, they have an affinity for organic matter, like oil or hydrocarbon products like solvents.  The moss will absorb hydrocarbons and other organics before any water or inorganic matter due to this affinity. Once a hydrocarbon spill is pumped off to the greatest degree practical, the rest can be absorbed into the moss where it is encapsulated; it doesn't leach.

One of the big benefits of moss is that it provides a habitat for naturally occurring microbes which break-down hydrocarbons into organic carbon compounds.

The peat moss product can be strewn directly onto the oil floating in the water. It absorbs the oil on contact and encapsulates it. Water does not penetrate the peat moss, so the oil is trapped in a non-sticky crust which is easily removed from the surface of the water.

When peat is used to absorb a hazardous material, it would be subject to disposal laws and rules governing that hazardous material. But because crude oil will eventually biodegrade, the contaminated peat moss - with approval of local authorities, may be allowed to remain on site after a clean-up as part of the remediation making clean up an affordable necessity should an accident happen in your garden.