RESUMEN
Wastewater from the oil industry can be considered a dangerous contaminant for the environment and needs to be treated before disposal or re-use. Currently, membrane separation is one of the most used technologies for the treatment of produced water. Therefore, the present work aims to study the process of separating oily water in a module equipped with a ceramic membrane, based on the Eulerian-Eulerian approach and the Shear-Stress Transport (SST k-ω) turbulence model, using the Ansys Fluent® 15.0. The hydrodynamic behavior of the water/oil mixture in the filtration module was evaluated under different conditions of the mass flow rate of the fluid mixture and oil concentration at the entrance, the diameter of the oil particles, and membrane permeability and porosity. It was found that an increase in the feed mass flow rate from 0.5 to 1.5 kg/s significantly influenced transmembrane pressure, that varied from 33.00 to 221.32 kPa. Besides, it was observed that the particle diameter and porosity of the membranes did not influence the performance of the filtration module; it was also verified that increasing the permeability of the membranes, from 3 × 10-15 to 3 × 10-13 m2, caused transmembrane pressure reduction of 22.77%. The greater the average oil concentration at the permeate (from 0.021 to 0.037 kg/m3) and concentrate (from 1.00 to 1.154 kg/m3) outlets, the higher the average flow rate of oil at the permeate outlets. These results showed that the filter separator has good potential for water/oil separation.
RESUMEN
Petroleum has been extracted from oil reservoirs using different techniques. This activity is accompanied for a large amount of water and sometimes mixed with gas. This produced water has a high oil concentration and other toxic chemical compounds, thus, it must be treated to be reused or released to environment according to environmental protection regulations. Currently, ceramic membrane technology has been employed in the wastewater treatment, due to its high benefit-cost ratio. In this sense, this work aims to study the oil-water mixture separation process using a new configuration of tubular ceramic membrane module by computational fluid dynamic (ANSYS Fluent software). The proposed model is composed of mass and linear momentum conservation equations coupled to Darcy's law and SST k-ω turbulence model. Results of the volumetric fraction, pressure, and velocity distribution of the oil and water phases are presented and discussed. The results indicated that the proposed model and new device both have great potential to be used on the water/oil separation process and that the transmembrane pressure remains constant in the axial direction and decreases radially through the membranes, indicating an efficient system that favors the transport of clean water and oil retention.