Question by takitaki333: How do petrochemical industries recycle their waste water?
Do they use industrial boiler systems? If so, what happens to the waste water after it is heated?
Best answer:
Answer by oil field trash
There is no one answer to this question. It depends on the water needs for the process and the contaminates in the waste water. It might be used in a boiler or cooling water system. It might also be used as utility water for area wash down and clean up.
Add your own answer in the comments!
Wastewater from this industry and several others are called oily wastes. This could not be used “as is” in a boiler without fouling the inner workings of it and connected piping. Treatment of this wastewater could clean it to a usable state. Conventional physical/chemical treatment might work if large volumes were involved. However, filtration schemes could be utilized. Ultrafiltration (UF) or nanofiltration (NF) followed by reverse osmosis (RO) would produce water of a reusable quality. Lesser pretreatment might allow discharge to a municipal or other industrial treatment system.
Oil field trash is correct – it depends on a lot of things.
Here’s my take – one big consideration for whether the wastewater can be recycled back into the plant is whether or not the wastewater is considered “hazardous waste” – at least in the US. You might aware that that hazardous waste is a subset of solid waste – and that “solid waste” can include aqueous wastes – the term “solid” has nothing at all to do with the phase of a substance – “solid wastes” can be solids, liquids, or even gases.
Now, non-hazardous wastewater, or efluent from hazardous wastewater treamtent that is not hazardous anymore, may be used for potentially any number of things – e.g., cooling water for various industrial processes, feed water, and I even heard of one company proposing to re-use their wastewater for fire control systems – in that last case, we were quite concerned as to whether or not the wastewater was hazardous or not. If they used hazardous wastewater for fire control – they could get in trouble for disposal of hazardous waste without a permit – big time fines.
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Anyway, anywhere water would be needed is a potential application, depending on the quality of water needed.