Wax Recovery from Cameroon Petroleum Refinery Conditioned Oily Sludge

Abstract

As all petroleum refineries, the Cameroon National Petroleum Refinery generates oily sludge that have to be treated. A certain number of researches have already been conducted on it in the sense of oil content recovery before disposal. The conducted study had the objective of wax precipitation from the recovered oil fraction of oily sludge. The experimental design on three parameters (Acetone/Hexane ratio named Solvent, Solvent/Hydrocarbons extract ratio, and Contact time) allow us to reveal that 2,6-Dimethylundecane (C13) and Tetracosane (C24) are the only compounds that are extracted no matter the extraction conditions. Also, it was shown that the most abundant compounds with concentrations ranged from 49 to 225 ppm and from 22 to 105 ppm respectively for 2,6-Dimethylundecane (C13) and Tetracosane (C24). Nonadecane and Pristane are absent in extract n°1 (8:1; 4:1; 90) and n°4 (10:1; 6:1; 90) respectively. Phytane is completely absent from all extracts. The extraction condition that gave the highest amount of wax is the extraction n°10 (9:1; 4:1; 105).