Treatment of Oily Wastewater Produced From Old Processing Plant of North Oil Company

Abstract

The main objectives of this research were to study and analyses oily wastewater characteristics originating from old-processing plant of North Oil Company and to find a suitable and simple method to treat the waste so it can be disposed off safely.The work consists of two stages; the first was the study of oily wastewater characteristics and its negative impacts. The results indicated that oil and grease were the most dominant pollutant with concentration range between 1069 – 3269.3 mg/l that must be removed; other pollutants were found to be within Iraqi and EPA standards. The next stage was the use of these characteristics to choose the proper technology to treat that wastewater. This stage was divided into two stages: the first stage was a jar tests to find the optimum doses of alum, lime and powdered activated carbon (PAC). The second stage was the treatment by a batch pilot plant constructed for this purpose employing the optimum doses as determined from the first stage to treat the waste using a flotation unit followed by a filtration-adsorption unit. The removal efficiencies of flotation unit for oil and grease, COD, and T.S.S found to be 0.9789, 0.974, and 0.9933, respectively, while the removal efficiency for T.D.S was very low 0.0293. From filtration – adsorption column the removal efficiencies of oil and grease, T.D.S, COD, and T.S.S were found to be 0.9486, 0.8908, 0.6870, and 0.7815, respectively. The overall removal efficiencies of pilot plant were 0.9986, 0.8939, 0.9921, and 0.9950, respectively. The results indicated that this type of treatment was the simplest and most effective method that can be used to treat produced oily wastewater before disposal.