Efficient performance of the combination of treatment processes for oilfield produced water generated from oil tank dewatering was investigated in the study presented below. Byproduced wastewater is generated in significant quantity during exploitation of crude oil and gas from onshore and offshore production operations. This wastewater, commonly referred to as "produced water", has distinctive characteristics, due to their organic and inorganic compounds. However, these characteristics change from well to well. The treatment process investigated here consists of a pre-treatment step utilizing microfiltration (0.1 and 0.2µm pore size filters) and/or a simulated batch dissolved air flotation (DAF), and a multistage posttreatment step utilizing cross-flow ultra-(0.05µm pore size and 20kDa molecular weight cutoff filters), and nanofiltration (1 and 0.75kDa MWCO filters). Filters used were ceramic membranes. To determine the separation capability of the processes described, various parameters, such as trans-membrane pressure varying from 0.5 to 2 bar, cross-flow velocity in the range of 0.6 to 1.3m/s, influent oil concentration ranging from 32 to 5420 parts per million (ppm) and different membrane cleaning methods used were investigated. The average permeate flux varied from 3.4 to 3300 l/h*m²*bar, total oil removal was up to 99.5% and total organic carbon removal reached 49%.

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Utilization of renewable resources is becoming increasingly important, and only sustainable processes that convert such resources into useful products can achieve environmentally beneficial economic growth. Wastewater from the pulp and paper industry is an unutilized resource offering the potential to recover valuable products such as lignin, pigments, and water [1]. The recovery of lignin is particularly important because it has many applications, and membrane technology has been investigated as the basis of innovative recovery solutions. The concentration of lignin can be increased from 62 to 285 g∙L−1 using membranes and the recovered lignin is extremely pure. Membrane technology is also scalable and adaptable to different waste liquors from the pulp and paper industry.