acceptable petroleum levels in ground water

[shteve]

Hello all,

My company owns a stamping plant and is having problems with the cooling system on one of the new presses. The cooling water is ground water, run through plastic pipe, to rubber hose, through a heat exchanger and back out. We had a heat exchanger actually corrode through recently, so we sent water samples for testing and received the following results:

IN WATER

Oil and Grease 0 ppm
pH 7.0
Conductivity 2.46 mS/cm
Chloride 191.7 ppm
Fluoride 3.16 ppm
Sulfate 1553.5


OUT WATER

Oil and Grease 3.1 ppm


Obviously the water is corrosive. My question is, where is this 3.1 ppm of oil and grease coming from? Could the water be so corrosive that it is absorbing oil from the plastic pipes and rubber hoses?

Also, what are the acceptable levels of petroleum in ground water? We are very enviromentally conscious and do not want to cause any damage.

Any help with any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Steve

 

[saxon]

shteve, First, "Which lab protocol is being used for running the FOG Test?" Secondly, the accuracy of the standard test protocol is poor at best below about 20 ppm. Another question is, "Where are you discharging this water to?" Is it going to an onsite or offsite treatment plant or is it being discharged to surface waters or is it being sent to a reinjection well? Or is it a once through cooling circuit? Is it being recycled back to an open cooling tower? Or is this a closed loop chiller circuit?

Your plant undoubtedly has Environmental Operating Permits that spell out in great detail various discharge limits. Check with the Plant/Corp. Environmental Health and Safety Group. They will be able to fill you in on all the details. Furthermore, if you are discharging to an on/offsite treatment plant check with them for allowable discharge/influent concentrations. These should also be covered in your Operating Permits.

Hope this helps.
saxon

 

[asesor]

It is imposible for oil to come from the pipes. Probably you have some stream passing near the pipes and getting into it or else it is coming from somewhere else, but never fromn the pipes.Check all the oil and/or grease streams