Membrane technology for treating decanted oily wastewater from marine oil spill operations: Comparison between membrane filtration and membrane bioreactor.

Canadian oil spill response regulations require collection of all liquids from a response operation, this involves many vessels and frequent trips to shore to dispose of collected liquids, which mainly comprise of water. Onsite treatment of decanted oily seawater would benefit operations by addressing vessel storage and trip frequency issues. Membrane technology has proven effective at treating oily wastewater from various industries; therefore, is a good candidate for onsite treatment of wastewater generated from response operations. In this study, oily seawater treatment efficiency of a pilot-scale physical membrane filtration and a bench-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) were compared. Three main parameters were considered, total petroleum hydrocarbon, petroleum hydrocarbon fractions, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. 99.1 % and 98.2 % TPH removal efficiency were achieved by MBR (93.1 ppm initial oil concentration) and membrane filtration (28.3 ppm initial oil concentration), respectively. The MBR showed more promise than membrane filtration for onsite treatment of decanted wastewater.

Treatment of a synthetic decanted oily seawater in a pilot-scale hollow fiber membrane filtration process: Experimental investigation.

This study investigates the performance of a pilot-scale submerged hollow fiber (HF) ultrafiltration (UF) polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane filtration system for the treatment of two different types of oily seawater (i.e., seawater contaminated with light and heavy crude oil). The effects of membrane flux and aeration flow rate on membrane performance and the removal efficiency of different fractions of hydrocarbon, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were examined. The results for both heavy and light crude oil contaminated wastewater reveal that total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) removal efficiency of more than 91% was achieved. This research paper determined the optimal operational parameters for an HF membrane filtration system to obtain a good TPH removal efficiency. This system can easily be upscaled and placed on a barge to treat oily wastewater generated from marine oil spills, which can significantly improve the oil spill response capacity.