Treatment of Petroleum-Contaminated Water on Ships/Vessels

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Which treatment technologies of water after contamination by petroleum products on the vessels are you familiar with? 

What is your experience with using the technology?

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21 Answers

  1. Oksana

    Not all petroleum contaminants are the same.

    The best treatment will depend on the type and concentration of contaminants.

    The practical treatment will however depend on the budget, the treated water quality requirements, 

    Textile media bed water filtration offers a low CAPEX low OPEX to performance ratio of the media bed filter options and has an order of magnitude smaller footprint than a traditional sand media.

  3. The simplest, greenest, lowest-cost solution is to harness/create enough microbial populations (in the hostile bilge-water environment) to digest hydrocarbons, degrading them into carbon dioxide and water. We have developed a unique prebiotic biostimulant which builds vast & diverse microbial "workers" for this task; works in situ, biologically.  Attached are results from US "produced water" from fracking and industrial sludge of  >95% hydrocarbons. Yachts are using it for kitchen FOG reduction. Biocomplex contains oligosaccharides which uniquely feed microbes and organic acids which protect microbes via biological ion exchange.  Microbial diversity is key, per mother nature.  In petrol-contaminated waters, our process can be further sped up with application of very low levels of aeration (think tropical fish tank pump levels) to achieve full hydrocarbon elimination within 48 hours. Please email me for additional discussion.  Thank you.

    Mary Keenan - mkeenan@ekogea.com

  4. Dear Oksana,

    We are using for many years now an alternative, ecological treatment technology for the treatment of water contaminated with hydrocarbons. We have built several systems of the so-called Constructed Wetlands technology; it is a system based on natural processes and components to remove hydrocarbons from water, providing the benefit of minimum energy consumption, no use of chemicals, and overall significantly reduced operational costs up to 90% compared to mechanical solutions. We can combine these systems with oil recovery units, also based on natural processes. If you need more information on the advantages of this technology, please feel free to contact me.

  6. Lipase enzyme producing pseudomonas treatment protocols are suggested as ideal

  7. Dear Oksana,

    Treatment procedure will be suggested based on the following information:

    1- Waste water quality ( lab analysis ) and quantity ( daily batch, ADF, peak flow )

    2- For which purpose your effluent will be treated? is that for recycling? for environment impact mitigation?

    3- foot print assigned for the plant.

    Regards

  8. Dear Oksana,

    Now probable you are aware of the solution. Most of the earlier answers are close to the correct solution. First step will be to get the testing report of the wastewater sample if available. Generally these wastes are characterized by high COD and low COD to BOD ratio meaning that the wastes are less biodegradable. I will suggest treatment plant comprising Oil and grease separator (followed by DAF if emulsified oil is present), Equalization tank, Clariflocculator, Biological treatment like activated sludge process followed by tertiary treatment in the form of pressure sand filter, activated carbon filter and chlorination. The degree of treatment also depends on whether you want to dispose the treated waste in sea or reuse it. I hope you are satisfied with the answer.    

  9. We have developed a new innovative product precisely for these problems, this filter material is optically the same as the activated carbon, but it has over 20 times the absorption and is an absorber and adsorber in a product. It is hydrophobic and removes oil below 1 ppm from the water, activated charcoal does not remove under 4 ppm of oil from the water. For more information mail to info@adabsorb.com

  10. you can use Archae or P. Putida.  Both are in Chem5.  cheapest and most effective way of doing this in a sea going vessel, to get rid of POLS is a Chem Doctor unit.  modular and portable.  You can try it at no risk. 

  11. The best oil separation is depending on the forms of oil in the wastewater: via free oil or emulsified oil.

    You can easily and mechanically remove the free oil by hydro-cyclone or an interceptor or grease trap.

    For emulsified oil, a DAF unit with chemical coagulant would be better.

    Do not try any filtrations, such as MF or UF! It will be blocked straight way and very difficult to be recovered.

    You may also use granular activated carbon or other material to adsorb the oil and incinerate them later.

  12. Hi Oksana,

    We have some good experience in bilge water treatment we use free oil separation (decantation or tangential separator like the hydrocyclone mentioned it depend on the oil content, then we can look at very compact Ultrafiltrtion membrane for dissolved low molecular weight organic they can go to biologic treatment plant as mentioned in another answer.  We use BDD Boron Dope Diamond electrode to reduce/destroy COD and provide total disinfection allowing to discharge bilge water back at see.

    In general terms you oil/water separation will be: -
    -mechanical oil and water don't mix so a large part of the oil will coalesce and be removed mechanically.
    -if you have emulsified oil in the water you will need to further treat either by changing the chemistry or by Filtration that can be UF/NF typically
    - Dissolve organic will be removed by oxidation being Biologically , chemically or electrochemically.

    On board ships, size matters and compact system can be advantageous sanitation of the effluent is also essential nowadays. So UF/BDD is a good solution and different configurations exist. our BDD also allows to produce Oxidant/disinfection on demand and in-situ so no need for any chemical store chemical dosing or manhandling 

    If you need to know more or you are looking for specific please contact me. 

  13. A German scientist discovered oil eating microbes in the 1940,s. Later he named them Archaea. Their primary bio function was "eating oil", He became world renown. Dr Oppenheimer was hired at The University of Texas at Austin as the worlds leading microbiologist. Has cleaned 2,500 + oil spills. later the beneficial microbes were used in soil to eliminate all toxic materials and allow crop to grow to their genetic potential. Yachts, fishing boats, marinas use these microbes to eliminate their waste . Next will be the ocean bilge industry.  Already in use on oil tankers to clean empty tanks before refilling with product.  Most in the industry do not want to use it because it is so extremely inexpensive. and 100% effective. People like machines, chemicals, and high profit.  You may view one such cleanup on youtube. see: Mega-Borg oil spill. Agriculture is even more impressive.

  14. Oksana,

    Try Coconut  and Sugarcane water, they could be a great solution;

    both "COULD" also be reengineered ​ as solution to contamination ​resulting from petroleum ​products on the ​vessels. 

  16. Here in the US there are regulations regarding marine sewage and also bilge pump outs. If you are only looking at the bilge water with hydrocarbons, oil/water separators are a low energy approach sized for the flow and recovery of the hydrocarbons.

  17. Dear Oksana,

    We have plenty of expertise in treating wastewater from the petroleum industry.

    After buffer storage with equalisation, the first treatment step shall indeed be oil-water separation with oil recovery as replied by others. If the level of free oil is high than a simple gravity separator will remove 80%-90% of the oil. Hydrocyclones can also be used but their design and operation is tricky and they require relative high pressure pumps.

    Further oil removal including emusified oil (up to 99% removal) is achieved by Dissolved Air Floatation (DAF).

    Finally the soluble organics are completely removed by advanced activated sludge (AAS) biological treatment resulting in clean water for reuse.

  18. I have seen some literature using hydrocyclone to separate oil and water. The cyclone needs to be designed for this application (liquid-liquid separation) and the geometry is different than classical solid-liquid cyclones. 

  19. oil water separation +filter

  21. Hello Oksana

    Our competence is to monitor the process of water treatment with on-line measurement of all necessary parameters like turbidity, oil traces, other organic contamination, pH, condictiity ....

    If you have any particular question about such measurements, do not hesitate to cotact me at any time.

    Best regards

    Hans Rudolf