British inventor, Mark Batt-Rawden sees new technology as a game changer for climate change

Envorem Limited, led by Mark Batt-Rawden is emerging as one of the UK’s most exciting clean technology, low-carbon innovators. The company was founded in 2019 with a pilot operation in Oman. Envorem technology has proved to be highly successful for cleaning hydrocarbon contaminated soil and sludges and Envorem is about to build a production scale plant with a throughput five times greater than any other mobile plant on the planet today.  

So who is the leader of this ground-breaking company? And can Envorem really deliver the clean tech they promise?  Envorem News spoke to the company’s Managing Director Mark Batt-Rawden, who is based in Surrey but is increasingly overseas as interest in the technology flourishes. 

Envorem News: What your team at Envorem has accomplished is an extraordinary feat, but how did your career in engineering start? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: My first job was working as an electrical engineer. Then I decided to go to uni at 24 as I realised it was a mistake not to have a degree. So, I graduated a bit later than usual, at 28, with a B Eng in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Surrey. Whilst studying, my perspective changed and I graduated taking a job at BT, but not in engineering, but sales and marketing!  

My first account was the Met Office. It seems I had a flair for sales, consistently exceeding targets. The Royal Airforce account was soon added, which was one of their biggest and I ended up running the colossal Ministry of Defence account. 

This led to me moving into the world of systems integration at Syntegra. Initially I was given the responsibility to build its energy and utilities sector in the UK and latterly Europe, which I managed to increase from zero to 20 million turnover in a few years. This rapid success instilled in me the confidence to step out and do ‘my own thing’ 

Envorem MD, Mark Batt-Rawden speaking at the New Energy in Oman Conference in London on 27th July 2022. The event was hosted by the Omani British Business Council. Mark participated in a panel session focusing on Decarbonising the Oil & Gas Process.

Envorem News: So what was your first engineering invention then? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: Early on in my career, I devised a simple system for managing the opening and closing of fire doors. At the time I wondered if the design had any commercial value and I discovered it did, especially in the care industry. So, I built a business that sold specialist door closing systems to care homes. My primary marketing strategy was to bypass the traditional supply chain and go direct to end users, largely creating a new market around my product. That strategy worked very well and the product was soon used in over 200 care homes. 

Envorem News: That must have given you valuable entrepreneurial experience which you can draw on today? So how did Envorem start? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: Yes absolutely, my marketing strategies remain pretty much the same. I actually got into remediation through a friend at my golf club. He had a contact who claimed to have a technology for cleaning up oil contaminated beaches, coincidentally around the time of Deep Water Horizon, the BP spill. My friend thought I would understand the core process and help to take the project further.  

Unfortunately, this association was a disaster as the contact ultimately turned out to be dishonest and my friend and I both lost a lot of money. A  good thing to came out of it though, was that I saw the huge potential to clean the wastes from the oil production industry and continued to strive to find a solution.   

I then met my co-founder Mike Levey, who had been working on the same problem from a slightly different technological perspective. Putting our ideas together gave us the solution we had both been looking for, something that was environmentally friendly, relatively inexpensive and high throughput. 

Throughput is important because of the scale of the problem and that existing thermal solutions, which at best process five tonnes an hour, could barely scratch the surface. We both knew that oil industry waste was a major environmental problem we wanted to take on.

Of course, marketing would be a challenge as pollution and wastes are not something the oil industry want to talk about much. Nevertheless, we carried on working on the technology and in 2019 we started Envorem. We were really fast out the blocks securing pilots from two state oil companies in the Middle East. Covid in early 2020 put the brakes on but now the momentum is rapidly building again. 

Envorem News: So you were an early adopter of green tech even before Climate Change became a major world focus? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: Yes, we realised we had a unique solution to a global problem. We saw how oil companies are confronted with what to do with oil contaminated soil and the sludges derived from oil production activities and these need to be disposed of somehow: we simply have to give the industry an attractive alternative to spreading these over the land or dumping them in the sea.  

Our aim is to incentivise change in the current industry by making our treatment solution affordable and potentially less expensive than current disposal practices. We want the client to save money and benefit the environment. A true win-win.  

Our slogan ‘Oil Pollution stops here!’ is bold but that is exactly what we are about. Our technology can largely halt the generation of more wastes from oil production and economically address the colossal volumes of legacy deposits.   

Envorem News: It’s amazing that is now a possibility. So you are a keen golfer, we hear you also have a love for penguins.  

Mark Batt-Rawden: Yes, I enjoy playing golf and recreational poker, and since childhood when my parents bought me an amazing book called ‘The Marvels and Mysteries of Our Animal World’ I’ve also had a love for animals in particular, penguins. It’s only slight coincidence that our Envorem logo features a penguin and now our company mascot is a toy penguin we call Malcolm. He usually accompanies me on my travels!  

Seriously though, we have to see the ocean cleared up, which is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  80% of the oil pollution in the oceans from ships is believed to be caused by the illegal dumping of oily sludge in the ocean. Innovate UK, have recently awarded Envorem a development grant to miniaturise our technology for ships, the objective being to recycle these sludges on board to create more fuel as opposed to being dumped.

On land, every day, the equivalent of more than 1 million barrels of crude oil are discarded in hazardous waste sludge at a huge environmental and financial cost - its massive problem. We can fix this and, it doesn’t need to cost the industry very much. Envorem has the solution, we just need the industry to lift its blinkers and embrace it. 

Envorem News: That is amazing. This must be a huge breakthrough for the oil and gas industry? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: It is and I am delighted to lead a company that genuinely delivers a win-win, particularly where one of the winners is our planet. Adoption should be a ‘no brainer’ but getting that message to the right pair of ears is not easy.  

Envorem News: Where do these sludges come from and how exactly does it work? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: When oil comes out the ground it's not clean. It contains sediments and water that the oil industry extract and discard as waste. The global legacy of sludge deposits is colossal, circa 1.8 billion tonnes and a huge blot on our environment. Alternatively to incinerate those deposits would generate more carbon dioxide than 75 million flights from London to New York. 

Our innovative new technology uses a little known natural physical phenomenon in water to produce very powerful bubbles. These explode with incredible forces, tearing sludges apart, cleaning the solids and separating the entrained oil - all without generating emissions. It sounds simple but the technology is highly complex with several processing stages. The recovered oil is chemically unchanged and completely suitable for refining. The sediments are largely clean enough for return to the environment. The water we use is recycled within the process.  

Envorem News: So you have had some huge setbacks along the way… Have they deterred you? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: Losing my initial investment was a huge lesson learnt. Then Covid-19 stopped us in our tracks just as Envorem was getting going. Thankfully we were awarded a grant from Innovate UK’s  Sustainable Innovation Fund to further develop the technology. That kept our team together and focused on developing this technology, getting our essential environmental product closer and closer to market readiness.  

Envorem has a great team and they are all highly motivated. We have the only environmental solution to a significant global problem. With the right support we could rid the planet of these large sludge lagoons and environmental disaster they represent. The world is transitioning away from fossil fuels as fast as possible. What we can do is make oil production cleaner during that transition and make sure there is no mess left behind. 

Envorem News: So what happens next? 

Mark Batt-Rawden: Following our successful pilot project in Oman the company now intends to build its first production grade system. This will be a major leap forward in showing the oil producers how they can change their practices, help the environment and reduce costs. Right now several oil producers are considering our technology and we hope to announce our first commercial client very soon.