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Oily Water Separators Start with a summary. Tell the viewer about the technology

History

In 1948 a Water Pollution Control Act (WPA) was passed by the federal government. This act gave rights to the surgeon general of the public health service to make programs to decrease the amount of pollution in the world’s waters. The main concern was to save water, protect fish, and have clean water for agricultural usage. The WPA also helped to start the process of building water treatment plants. This is to guard against sewage from polluting drinking water. In 1972 the WPA was amended to include more requirements in order to insure that the water is chemically sound. This amendment also furthered regulations to insure the quality of the water was up to par. In 1987 the WPA was amended again to put an even more strict control on water supply pollution. With this new amendment water sources had to fit a specific set of criteria to fight against pollution. The WPA was amended looking and evaluating what goes into the waters, and determines whether they will lower the quality of water or not.

Purpose

The purpose of shipboard Oily Water Separator (OWS) is to separate oil and other contaminants that could be harmful for the oceans. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) publishes regulations through the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC). On January 1, 2005 the MEPC issued new regulations that each vessel built after this date had to follow. Each OWS must be able to achieve clean bilge water under 15 ppm of type C oil or heavily emulsified oil, and any other contaminates that may be found. All Oil Content Monitors (OCM) must not be able to be tampered with. Also whenever the OWS is being cleaned out the OCM must be active for zeroing it out. An OWS must be able to clear out contaminants as well as oil. Some of these contaminating agents include lubricating oil, cleaning product, soot from combustion, fuel oil, rust, sewage, and several other things that can be harmful to the ocean environment.

Bilge

The Oily Water Separator (OWS) is the main transportation of the bilge. The Bilge area is the lowest area on a ship. This is where most of the liquid drains from things such as steam boilers, water purification systems and oil lab deep sink drains. The main places in this hull of the ship, where Bilge drains to is the main engine room, Auxiliary Machine rooms and shaft ally. This is where the water is collected and referred to as “bilgewater” or “oily waste water”. The bilgewater that collects here include drain/leftover water from the boilers, water collecting tanks, drinking water and other places where water can be overflowed. However, bilgewater doesn’t just include water drains. Another system that drains into the Bilge system comes from the propulsion area of the ship. Here fuels, lubricants, hydraulic fluid, antifreeze, solvents, cleaning chemicals also drain into the bilge system in small quantities. This is where the OWS system comes into play.

Treatment and Transfer

In order to get rid of the additives in the bilgewater, things like oil, and other fluids, regulations have been made to treat this water. In order to treat this water, it needs to be circulated in an Oily Water Separator so that it can be transferred over board. The OWS system also can be used to retrieve the leftover oil that was extracted from the Oily water. The left over oil has two options, it could be put in a holding tank and discharged at a later time to a waste oil treatment company, or it could be cycled though waste oil cyclers and treated . Typical OWS systems must he contained in a Oily Waste Holding Tank (OWHT). From the OWHT the bilge water then travels, using gravity phased separation, coalescence beds, or centrifugal separation to proceed with the separation of the oil or other containments from the Bilgewater.

Coalescing Plate Gravity Separator

A Coalescing Plate Gravity Separator is the most common type of OWS. In this separator there is a main plate separator that contains oleophilic beds. In these beds water is filtered though millions of little oleophilic balls that attract oil and filter the water for overboard transportation. These oleophilic beads are also hydrophobic meaning that they like to abstain from the water. So this effectively sorts out the water from the oil even when they are heavily emulsified . The left over dirty water is contained in the Waste Oil Tank. When the OWS is full of oil a back flush will take place in order to separate the oil from the oleophilic balls.Then normal operation can continue. When the dirty oil tank is full then it will be shipped to a waste oil facility such as Hazardous Waste Collection Center (HWCC) . At these facilities they can reuse some of the oil or they will just burn it of to get rid of it.

Eco Stream Oily Water Separator

Authors

Hunter Soules Hsoules1, Shae Loring ShaeLo7