Salination of rivers by refinery effluents

Abstract

1. The refineries which receive undesalted crudes are sources of salination of the country's rivers. Many industrial enterprises which use river water for production purposes are obliged to incur additional expenditure to desalt this water. 2. No over-all studies have yet been conducted in order to determine the loss to the national economy as a whole and to the individual industries due to the higher salt content of river water. 3. In this work, we have estimated the loss suffered by the Bashenergo thermal power stations which use the water of the river Belaya having a high content of dissolved salts. The expenditure incurred by the power stations for the chemical treatment of the water went to solve only the individual problems. The effective crude dewatering and desalting in the oilfields is more economical and technically the most advantageous. 4. It is necessary to build desalting units designed to beat the entire amount of salt crude production in the fields in the shortest possible time and comply with the All-Union State Standard 9905-52 for petroleum crudes delivered from the fields to the refineries. 5. The mineral salts produced with the crude should be returned in full into the earth by pumping the waste formation water from the crude treatment plants in the oilfields into low-pressure and injection wells.