Abstract
Wastewater from the oil industry can be considered a dangerous contaminant for the environment and needs to be treated before disposal or re-use. Currently, membrane separation is one of the most used technologies for the treatment of produced water. Therefore, the present work aims to study the process of separating oily water in a module equipped with a ceramic membrane, based on the Eulerian–Eulerian approach and the Shear-Stress Transport (SST k-ω) turbulence model, using the Ansys Fluent® 15.0. The hydrodynamic behavior of the water/oil mixture in the filtration module was evaluated under different conditions of the mass flow rate of the fluid mixture and oil concentration at the entrance, the diameter of the oil particles, and membrane permeability and porosity. It was found that an increase in the feed mass flow rate from 0.5 to 1.5 kg/s significantly influenced transmembrane pressure, that varied from 33.00 to 221.32 kPa. Besides, it was observed that the particle diameter and porosity of the membranes did not influence the performance of the filtration module; it was also verified that increasing the permeability of the membranes, from 3 × 10−15 to 3 × 10−13 m2, caused transmembrane pressure reduction of 22.77%. The greater the average oil concentration at the permeate (from 0.021 to 0.037 kg/m3) and concentrate (from 1.00 to 1.154 kg/m3) outlets, the higher the average flow rate of oil at the permeate outlets. These results showed that the filter separator has good potential for water/oil separation.
Highlights
These results are presented in terms of the following parameters: transmembrane pressure (∆P); average oil concentration at the permeate outlets (AOCP); average oil concentration in the concentrate (AOCC); average oil mass flowrate at the permeate outlets (AOMP); average speed of the mixing at the permeate outlets (AVMP); the average volume of oil in the hull (AVOH); the average volume of oil in the permeate (AVOP) and the average volume of oil in the membranes (AVOM)
The increase in membrane permeability from 3 × 10 from 3 × 10−15 to 3 × 10−13 m2 reduced the transmembrane pressure from 153.82 to 111.88 to 3 × 10−13 m2 reduced the transmembrane pressure from 153.82 to 111.88 kPa, which kPa, which corresponds to a reduction of 22.77%
This research evaluated the behavior of different process parameters in a porous ceramic membrane module used in the treatment of oily water
Summary
The water produced is a mixture of different materials (fluids, dissolved and suspended solids) originating from the extraction of oil and gas in underground reservoirs. A large amount of water is produced with a high load of organic and inorganic compounds, featuring extremely saline, oily, and toxic effluents for living beings. For each barrel of oil produced, about three barrels of residual water are released [1,2,3]. Due to the high risk to health and environmental imbalance [2,4], Brazilian and international environmental regulatory companies have established norms and regulations related to the mandatory treatment of this produced water before its disposal or reuse [3]
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