Photo Credit : gasworld.com,
Log 9 Spill Containment, a nanotechnology-driven, Graphene-based product development company specializing in oil and chemical spill containment/absorbent solutions, has raised a Pre Series-A funding of Rs. 4 crore from angel investors Renjit Shinto and Omkar Ghaisas.
A major portion of these funds will be used by the company to set up a new, state-of-the-art production facility in Navi Mumbai for the manufacturing of its existing product portfolio, while the rest will go towards development of new products in industrial spill and other domains.
Dhananjay Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Log 9 Spill Containment Pvt. Ltd. said, “It gives us immense pleasure and happiness to announce the maiden fundraise by Log 9 Spill Containment, coming only a few months after the official launch of our company.
At Log 9 Spill, we are using Graphene as the base material to bridge the gap between laboratory-developed technologies and market-ready products, and thus creating, manufacturing, and commercializing novel solutions for the clean-tech sector. We have already developed a brand by the name Sorbene, which represents oil/chemical sorbents made with Graphene. The funds we have received recently will boost Log 9 Spill’s capabilities not only in terms of production and scaling up of our Sorbent range of products, but also aid us in the research and development of new products that shall cater to domestic and international markets in providing efficient oil spill clean-up solutions.”
The company has already marked its presence in the domestic market selling innovative sorbent pads to a number of petrochemical refineries, marine clean-up as well as environment protection stakeholders. The Sorbene product range of Log 9 Spill are able to absorb oil up to 86 times their own weight, and have been tested and certified against British Standards by third-party laboratories. Further, these Sorbene products provide customers the advantage of reusability—each product can be reused a number of times before the absorbance capacity drops down; these have also been certified safe to incinerate and dispose off.
Elucidating more on the environment-friendliness of the company’s products, Mr. Dhananjay Sharma adds, “During each life cycle, our Sorbene products reduce the carbon emission to atmosphere by at least 50% as compared to conventional products. The Sorbene pads are very flexible and can be folded and used as wipes. A single Sorbene pad can be used for 6 to 8 cycles, whereas other traditional pads can be used only once. Their reusability and higher absorbance ability reduces the overall number of pads required per unit spill volume. This invariably reduces the carbon footprint to produce the mats, reducing the energy requirement, wastages during production and usage, transportation requirements and storage space allocations.”
Prof. Ashok Misra, Distinguished Professor, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (former Director of IIT Bombay) feels that in terms of disrupting the global oil spill market in the times to come, Graphene technology offers huge promise. “Graphene possesses a high surface area and also demonstrates excellent adsorption and absorption, thus making it a material of choice for sustainable application in the spill clean-up domain. It is heartening to note Log 9 Spill’s team is conducting pioneering and path breaking work in this segment, based on their existing expertise in the area of Graphene nanotechnology, and have developed their branded product Sorbene. In addition to conducting research and experimentation activities, they are bringing market-ready products for the domestic and international markets. I extend my hearty congratulations on the first successful funding raised by them,” said Prof. Mishra.
Oil spills and chemical spills are caused mostly due to the leaking of tankers, pipelines, etc. can lead to long-term environmental havoc towards aquatic ecosystem. During spill clean-ups, while sorbents help in cleaning up fine traces of oil from areas where skimmers and equipments may not reach, popularly used sorbents in this domain have presented disadvantages and limitations over the years. For instance, as the oil viscosity increases, some traditional sorbents gradually begin to lose effectiveness. Undoubtedly, selective absorption capacity of these sorbents is of extreme importance for such applications, and this is exactly where the “miracle material” Graphene is able to add immense value.