The significance of this project is that the system will be able to treat the industrial waste water, so that it is both safer for the environment and cheaper for disposal. In addition to the water benefits, the system will also be able to recover oil so that it is reusable after additional processing.
The purpose of this task is to design a water treatment system that is able to separate emulsified oil from a brackish oil-in-water emulsion.
Industrial processes that involve the extraction of crude oil create emulsions which contain microscopic oil particles dispersed throughout water. These contaminants need to be removed from the water before being reused in other processes.
The problem with emulsions is that the microscopic, emulsified, oil particles are so tiny that they will not separate from water over time. Increasing the size of the oil droplets will cause them to coalesce into larger oil particles that are easier to recover as they rise and collect on the water’s surface.
H2Oleum’s objective for this project is to provide a design solution that will create a high degree of separation between the two liquids, oil and water, to recover as much oil as possible from the water. The report will outline H2Oleum’s proposed solution to the client’s request for a cost effective, efficient, and robust water treatment system that is able to recover the emulsified oil from a brackish water stream.