By Ebele Orakpo

The days of spending tons of money and between 11 and 12 months to clean up an oil spill on our waters, seem to be over as a Nigerian researcher, Engr. Taslim Owonikoko, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Iseyin, Oyo State-based Berekotry Detergent Limited, has come up with a solution, interestingly made from agricultural waste. He spoke with Vanguard Learning on his new invention. Excerpts:

Motivation:
Call it serendipitous discovery and you will be right because according to Owonikoko, he did not set out to look for an oil spill cleaner. He was actually looking for a local, more environment-friendly and cheaper alternative to phosphate in his detergent formulation and also to create jobs for the teeming technical workforce.

”The oil spill cleaner came up as an offshoot of trying to impact Nigerians positively and satisfy Nigerian customer base. Nigerian consumers are very meticulous and know the dynamics of the market more than the technical workforce. We wanted to knock off phosphate from Nigeria to save our waterways which are usually covered by water hyacinth.

“Many people do not know that water hyacinth on our waterways is caused by waste laundry water laden with sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) in detergent formulations. At that time, nobody knew the negative effects of STPP in detergent formulations. So we were trying to create something that will be a plus to the environmental wellbeing of Nigerians using as much local content as we can.

Engr. Owonikoko

“We wanted to really make an impact on the society through our interest in Research and Development (R&D) and based on the fact that we work on agricultural waste round the clock to create very good industrial products. We have been working tirelessly to ensure that we impact the rural dwellers and the unemployed graduates roaming the streets through agriculture, Nigeria being an agrarian society,” Owonikoko said.

Searching for an alternative:
Engr. Owonikoko explained further; “Carboxyl cellulose is the most expensive aspect of detergent formulation so if we had increased that, as requested by the market, we would not have been able to compete with those coming from Asia so we needed to look inwards. We started working on cellulose from agric waste and instead of the cellulose giving us the required result as additive in our detergent formulation, we were getting a different ‘disappointing’ result which now turned out to be diamond and gold in our R&D pipeline.

The cellulose was now turned into several products. The oil spill cleaner was made from cellulose, it was a spin-off mistake of trying to increase the quality of the detergent that led to the production of oil spill cleaner from agro waste. That is why in research, at times when you think you have reached a dead end, you can go and sleep and really dream, because that dead end may equally give you a block buster which we have achieved by our product.

This is world’s fastest and safest oil spill mopping agent that has been certified by all regulatory bodies in the OPEC world and the DPR in Nigeria. So we have not only just produced a mopping agent, we have created one of the best in the oil industry.

The DPR bio-assay analyst said our product on touching crude oil on water surface in Nigerian environmental condition, reduces toxicity of oil by 200 per cent which means that the oil has been totally arrested and coagulated and therefore, no longer toxic to aquatic life. Based on the information we got from the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), we got to know that the imported enzymatic cleaning agent takes between 11 and 12 months to clean oil spill especially in the riverine areas but our own solution will clean within just 10 minutes.”

Process:
“In research, if you are really working towards product development, you will go through four or five different stages which we refer to in chemical engineering as Front-End lobby or field gauge analysis. In field analysis, you first of all start from discovery which emanate from R&D, then you go to the second stage called scoping, then to feasibility assessment/analysis.

The fourth stage is what we call establishment of capability ie, is the expertise behind this R&D up to the task? Berekotry Detergent Limited is primarily a chemical engineering enterprise and we are not only into manufacturing, we are equally working towards making a global brand and according to an old adage, if you want to go global, think local,” he said, adding; “the fifth stage is testing and validation which we have secured presently.

In Nigeria, I don’t think there is any start-up company that has surpassed what we have achieved by Nigerian standards and by small size on a global scale. I think we have surpassed whatever anyone may have expected,” he enthused.

The company which won the maiden edition of the National System of Innovation Exhibition in Lagos organised by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology in collaboration with the United Nations Development Fund, has secured six national patents, with several others pending, and three Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) certifications. “We have equally gotten one approval from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR); we have multiple trademarks pending which is a plus to us.

“We may not have the wherewithal, but we are working towards making ourselves known by attacking the local market,” he stated.