Many chemical process plants, particularly petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants, employ API separators as their first, and arguably the most important, wastewater treatment step for primary oil/solids separation. Employing gravity-driven settling, the separators remove gross quantities of oil and suspended solids from plant wastewater prior to subsequent downstream wastewater-treatment processes, the latter normally consisting of a second oil/water-separator polishing step plus some form of advanced (usually biological) treatment for removing dissolved organic compounds. An understanding of the design, the operating principles and the available options for these devices can maximize the value derived from them by process plants.

Download the complete article (Reprinted from the July 2005 Chemical Engineering magazine. ©2005 Access Intelligence, LLC.)

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