Petroleum products in wastewater and their properties

Abstract

Water bodies are polluted by oil and petroleum products from various sources. The primary sources are navigation, accidents on ships and coastal areas, industrial wastewater discharges, surface wastewater from settlements, and transportation crossings of water bodies. Reducing the content of oil products in water bodies is an important task of nature protection, requiring the development of new effective methods of wastewater treatment from oil products. A systematic approach is proposed to solve this problem, including analysis of conditions of wastewater formation, study of phase-disperse composition of pollutants and their physical and chemical properties, and analysis of possible water treatment methods. According to the formation conditions, oily wastewater can be divided into domestic wastewater, surface runoff, and industrial wastewater. Depending on the formation conditions, oil products in wastewater are in different phase-disperse states with different sedimentation and aggregative stability values. Separation methods are most effective for sediment-unstable petroleum product systems and are sufficiently simple and reliable. Sedimentation stable systems of petroleum products in water need to be preliminarily destabilized. This is achieved by adding alkaline acids, mineral coagulants, or organic polyelectrolytes. Wastewater characterized by aggregative stable systems of petroleum products can be treated by degradation methods such as ozonation or sorption.