Disposal of Oily Sludge

Abstract

Significant quantities of oily sludge are formed in the process of oil production. As a multiphase mixture, it shares the characteristics of high emulsion stability and faces the challenges of disposing, storing, and discharging. The surface engineering operations are directly affected by the oily sludge, and the petroleum industry environments are threatened simultaneously. An investigation of characterizing the composition properties of oily sludge in Daqing oilfield was carried out recently. One kind of disposal equipment was established, large scale disposal simulation experiments were conducted, and the conditioning demulsification method was presented. The results indicated that oily sludge aggregation are consist of aging oil, wax, asphaltine, colloid, bacterium, salts, and water. Decrease the volume through reducing water-cut is a dominant method that would be beneficial to managing the oily sludge disposal with high efficiency and harmlessness, and conditioning demulsification plays an indispensable role in the whole process. The chemicals dosage, agitation intensity, disposal temperature and action time, as the primary parameters that would affect conditioning effect were all simulated and optimized respectively. Furthermore, the disposal process was designed, and the main equipments are recommended.

Keywords:

• oily sludge
• emulsion stability
• conditioning demulsification
• volume decreasing
• disposal process