Current technologies and future directions for treating petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants (PRPP) wastewaters

Submerged microfiltration membrane and activated carbon processes for recalcitrant compounds removal in oil refinery effluent as electrodialysis pre-treatment

“…TOC removal mainly occurred on the first hour of operation for all conditions tested, without any significant changes afterwards (Figure 3(b)), which is attributed to the suspended matter separation from the permeate stream. Presence of air purge in the feed tank had an interestingly effect towards TOC, which the removal increased around 13% when comparing the processes with 8/10 backwash cycle (∼50% TOC removal) after 4 h. This observation might be due to the selective oxidation of some organic compounds in the effluent as a result of the increase in dissolved O 2 in the feed tank (Jafarinejad & Jiang 2019).…”

“…Activated Carbon (AC) is normally used as a final polishing step in wastewater treatment plants, which the main goal is to adsorb recalcitrant contaminants that remains in the water after biological treatment (IPIECA 2010;Domingos & Fonseca 2018;Jafarinejad & Jiang 2019). Specifically in oil refinery, AC is used for dissolved recalcitrant organic compounds removal (IPIECA 2010;Mohammadi et al 2020).…”

“…The efficiency of AC relies on the adsorption capacity of the adsorbent, which depends on the intraparticle size, surface area, surface-active sites, and contact time (Mohammadi et al 2020). Likewise, MSP have been widely used in wastewater treatment plants, including the refinery ones, and, as a result, nowadays MSP is an economical competitive process that can achieve high quality treated effluents, along with relatively simple operation (IPIECA 2010;Jafarinejad & Jiang 2019). Membrane is a selective barrier that, depending on the morphology, will retain different compounds.…”

“…Instead, MF can achieve high performance towards such soluble compounds when applied alongside adsorbents, e.g., AC has been reported to remove organic matter from effluents, while MF separate them from the treated stream (Tomaszewska & Mozia 2002;Kim et al 2005;Kim et al 2009;IPIECA 2010;Zhao et al 2013;Amaral et al 2014;Shanmuganathan et al 2015;Liu et al 2017;Wang et al 2017;Mohammadi et al 2020). On the other hand, MSP presents some limitations, such as irreversible deposition of solid materials and further pores clogging, i.e., fouling, which decreases the permeation flow ( Jafarinejad & Jiang 2019;Nunes et al 2020).…”

Performance Evaluation of Ultra-Violet Light and Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for the Treatment of Synthetic Petroleum Wastewater: Kinetics of COD Removal

“…Many of the processes in petroleum refineries use a very large amount of water [ 4 ]. The refineries consequently generate a significant amount of wastewater that has been in contact with hydrocarbons, heavy metals and toxic compounds [ 5 , 6 ]. Water that is generated in the process units falls in the following categories: desalter effluent (resulting from desalting crude oil), sour water (steam condensed as an aqueous phase and removed as sour water), tank bottom draws (found in crude tanks, gasoline tanks, and slop tanks), and spent caustic (residual H 2 S, phenols, organic acids, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon dioxide).…”