Oil/Water Separation - Choosing the right equipment

[wardens355]

I am working on a collection of commercial oilfield disposal sites and am diving in head first to the world of oil-water separation (OWS). The sites will have a truck wash, where recently emptied tankers and end-dump trucks with cutting wastes will wash off. The wastewater from the truck wash bays will be collected and pumped to oil-water separation. High suspended solids content and chlorides/TDS are anticipated. At the moment, I am looking into API separators ($$$), CPI separators ($$), and gun-barrel tanks ($). Gun-barrel tanks do not seem to have solids handling capabilities, and I have read that they are typically used for crude oil with little water. This application is mostly water with some oil & solids. Also, it seems as if CPI separators do not have the ability to handle large amounts of solids (clogging of packing). Does anyone have any suggestions, guidance, or recommendations for this?

The sites will also be accepting produced water & possibly frac water, and will be disposed of through deep-well injection. Pretreatment will also include oil-water separation. I am not sure if this water will be high in solids content, but it will have high TDS. Would both these applications likely use the same OWS type?

I have not looked into hydrocyclones or DAF/DGF much since they seem more complex and not as straight-forward to operate.

Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[bimr]

I would approach this in this manner:

Remove the solids;
Remove the oil with a corrugated plate separator or API unit;
Concentrate the oil with a centrifuge.

Huber makes a screening system to remove the solids. Not sure if you have enough solids to make it worthwhile. This unit includes a screen followed by a grit collector.

http://www.huber.de/fileadmin/08_HUBER_Report/01_nach_Produkten/99_Industrie/Sand_Daqing_e.pdf

If you don't have a lot of solids, you can just use a grit collector.

One of the problems will be disposal of the solids. If you just remove the solids and do not remove the oil from the solids, it will be costly to dispose of the residual solids.

http://www.flottweg.de/global/appli...neral-oils/oil-sludge/index.html?a=44&level=1