Water and oil separator - Essay Example

Water and Oil separators that are properly, designed, operated and installed can provide a treatment system to be used in handling of oily wastewater. This can help prevent any entry of an unacceptable levels of contamination to either a sanitary sewer system or storm sewer (Grigsby 54). However, water and oil separators are never designed to help separate high concentration of oils or solids from water such as large quantity of sludge or oil that is poured or spilled in the wash bay drain. It is, therefore, important for the people tasked with discharging wastewater into water and oil separators to understand their principle of operation, and their limitations.

This will help prevent pollution of the environment. This paper discusses the common types of water oil separator systems. The focus is on their principle of operation, and the common properties of typical water and oil wastewater streams. Currently, there are two types of oil water separators (U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Centre, 27). These two exist in varying designs. The first design, which is also the oldest, is called the conventional/gravity separation or API separator, and the coalescing design or parallel corrugated plate.

The conventional/gravity design provides a certain tank width, depth and length that gives a wide, and quiet spot within the pipeline. This times for the oil to rise. This API design depends on the large water volume and can provide about 100 ppm discharge oil concentration on a 150-micron droplet size. This correlates with the size of the tank, which can potentially hold 5 times the size on sized coalescing separator. On the other hand, the coalescing design or parallel corrugated plate has a large surface area that is in contact with coalescing plates (the waste stream).

This design has a coalescing media, which causes the size of the tank to reduce. It also increases efficiency of its performance. The separation process