Produced oily water treatment efficiency by polyester fiber deep bed filter (phase two: Extended filter length and long duration)

Abstract

The petroleum industry generates a massive amount of oily water discharge from oil/water separators.Oily water will cause a major environmental risk if not treated before discharge. The challenge is to propose a suitable low-maintenance cheap treatment method.This study represents a second phase of testing polyester fibers as deep bed filtration media to treat produced oily water. The previous first phase study investigated the efficiency of the polyester fiber by conducting short-duration filtration tests using 40 cm polyester fiber filters.Two suggestions from the first phase study can be deduced: to optimize the oil removal efficiency of polyester fiber filters in long-duration field processes. Use either a large number of short filters with low flow capacity or less number of long filters with high flow capacity. The two methods were employed and tested separately in this study.The results of both methods clearly showed the ability of the polyester fiber deep bed filters to produce high-quality brine of less than 5 ppm oil concentration. The polyester fibers filter was proven to be a competitor with the existing materials used in the industry.