Oily sludge

The oil and gas industry produces much waste material, such as scrap metal, human waste, unspent chemicals, oily sludges and radiation. All of the incoming streams to a facility such as a production platform end up somewhere, and only few of the outgoing streams are useful product. It is one of the responsibilities of the engineer to try to limit the amount of incoming material which will finally become waste material. 

Wastes from petroleum refining, natural gas purification and pyrolitic treatment of coal 0501 oily sludges and solid wastes... 

Feed rates for fuel oil emulsion breakers vary significantly, but a starting point is perhaps 3,000 ppm. Where used to treat oily sludges (by adding to an API separator), the POE-POP ether component in the formulation aids the rejection of greasy soils from the oil and enables the separated oil to be reused as a fuel. 

Mean tar concentrations on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean Sea ranged from 884 to 4388 g m in 1975-76 (27). Chemical analyses indicated that 76% of the tar on Israeli beaches was weathered crude, 96% of it from Middle Eastern sources (28). Concentrations of tar on the beaches of Lebanon and Turkey appeared to be much lower than those at Alexandria, Egypt and Paphos, Cyprus, as a consequence of the orientation of these beaches relative to a site in the eastern Mediterranean Sea where dumping of oily sludge was permitted (27). 

In addition, oily sludge from a wastewater treatment facility that results from treating sour wastewaters may be a hazardous waste (unless recycled in the refining process). These include API separator sludge, primary treatment sludge, sludge from various gravitational separation units, and float from dissolved air flotation units. 

Methods based on gravimetric analysis (Table 7.2) are also simple and rapid, but they suffer from the same limitations as those of infrared spectrometric methods (Table 7.2). Gravimetric-based methods may be useful for oily sludge and wastewaters, which will present analytical difficulties for other, more sensitive methods. Immunoassay methods for the measurement of total petroleum hydrocarbon are also popular for field testing because they offer a simple, quick technique for in situ quantification of the total petroleum hydrocarbons. 

For example, a significant portion of refinery waste arises from oily sludge found in combined process/storm sewers. Segregation of the relatively clean rainwater runoff from the process streams can reduce the quantity of oily sludge generated. Furthermore, there is a much higher potential for recovery of oil from smaller, more concentrated process streams. 

Segregate oily wastes to reduce the quantity of oily sludge generated and increase the potential for oil recovery. 

Recover valnable prodnct from oily sludge with solvent extraction. 

Generate an increased the potential for oil recovery. A significant portion of refinery waste comes from oily sludge found in combined pro-cess/storm sewers. 

Several emerging processes may be applicable for treatment of oily drilling muds prior to disposal. One process being tested in Europe involves the use of an electric distillation kiln to break down solids-laden oil-based drilling muds [13]. Another process uses critical fluid to extract oil and organics from oily sludges so that they can be landhlled [34]. Copa and Dietrich [14] treated a sample of spent drilling mud with wet air oxidation. The COD content was reduced by 45 to 64% and the dewaterability of the mud was improved. 

This technology can remove oily sludges, pesticides, herbicides, pentachlorophenol, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), coal by-products, wood treating compounds, dioxins, and furans. It is often used in conjunction with the company s base-catalyzed decomposition (BCD) process. The BCD process is designed to treat chlorinated compounds. 

This technology is applicable for the treatment of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other halogenated contaminants, such as insecticides, herbicides, pentachlorophenol (PCP), lindane, and chlorinated dibenzodioxins and furans. The contaminant matrix can be soil, sludge, sediments, or oil. It can treat oily sludges, coal by-products, and wood-treating compounds. 

Organic extraction using solvents at the general refining Superfund site in Savannah, GA (Cheremisinoff, 1989) Oily sludges, hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, and triethylamine (TEA) Resources Conservation Company, Georgia... 

Is the wastewater from high pressure cleaning of heat exchangers treated separately and not with all the other water streams These often carry fine particles that provide a large surface area for oil and water to stabilize creating an oily sludge in the wastewater which is difficult to separate. 

For the purposes of this method, a chemical waste sample includes sample matrices of oils, stillbottoms, oily sludge, oil-laced soil, and surface water heavily contaminated with the matrices listed above (see Section 8.2). Internal standards are added in the concentrations listed in Table 4 to a 1 or 10 g aliquot of chemical waste. Wet fuel oil and oily sludge samples, showing signs of water, are spiked with the internal standard solution, fitted with a reflux condenser and a Dean Stark water separator to remove the water, and extracted with toluene. Stillbottom samples are spiked with the internal standard solution, refluxed with toluene, and filtered. 

For the purpose of this method, a chemical waste sample includes the sample matrices of oils, oily sludge, stillbottom, oil-laced soil, and surface water heavily contaminated with any of the above matrices. The sample may contain particulates and an obvious non-aqueous liquid phase. 

Oily Sludge/Wet Fuel Oil. Weigh about 1 g of sample to two decimal places into a tared preextracted 123-mL flask. Add 1 mL of the acetone-diluted internal standard solution (see Section 3.12) to the sample in the flask. Attach the preextracted Dean Stark water separator and condenser to the flask, and extract the sample by refluxing it with 30 mL of toluene for at least three hours. 

W.J. Hahn, High Temperature Reprocessing of Petroleum Oily Sludges. SPE Production Facilities, 9, 179-182, Aug. (1994). 

Water coming out along with gas and cmde oil from oil wells (known as produced water)—It can contain oily sludge and dissolved salts and hence needs considerable treatment before use ... 

Industrial waste (oily sludge from tanks, paint shop waste, sludge from cleaning of some process reactors). 

Splitting of emulsions and the removal of oil from oily sludge... 

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