Downstream

Slop oil

As an alternative to cost-intensive disposal of slop or waste oil, GEA has developed a method to recycle the slop oils into the refining or oil treatment process. The advantages for our customers: an optimum use of resources.

From waste...

Slop oil or waste oil is frequently stored in oil lagoons, and is obtained in the course of cleaning oil tanks, in filter backwash processes, as a waste product of the refining process, by way of leaks or "rejects" - waste from traditional oil treatment installations. They are mixtures of oil, a wide range of chemicals, water as well as coarse and fine solid particles, whereby there can be a major variation in the various compositions.

... to use

The first step is pretreatment of the slop oil. For this purpose, the oil temperature is raised to process temperature, corresponding chemicals (e.g. demulsifiers) are added for splitting emulsions, so that it can subsequently be homogenized in special mixers. This is an important aspect to ensure that the entire process is kept as stable as possible. Irrespective of whether the mixture has a high water and solids content or whether it has a high viscosity – high-performance decanters from GEA separate the solids; if used as three-phase decanters, they simultaneously separate the water from the oil, too. Our decanters automatically adapt the differential speed to the fluctuating feed conditions to always provide the best separation efficiency. In the subsequent polishing stage, disk-type centrifuges separate the residual water and extremely fine particles from the oil. The recovered oil now complies with the standard refining requirements and can be mixed with normal crude oil for further processing.

The processing of the aqueous phase from the decanter is handled by self-cleaning disk-type separators. They "polish" the water by removing extremely fine sediments and by reducing the residual oil content to the permissible limit and even below (usually 15 ppm and lower). In this way, existing environmental protection requirements can be reliably met, and the water can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner.

Explosion protection according to ATEX standard

Explosion-protected versions for the zone 2 or zone 1 according to ATEX compliance make for maximum safety in all relevant process stages. Thanks to our blanketing principle, products which are classified as hazardous can also be heated and processed reliably at temperatures above their flash point.

Complete systems and mobile solutions

As a competent partner for slop oil treatment, we offer complete systems for oil and water processing including the entire control facility. The process lines are available in various sizes and are customized to meet the specific needs of the customer. In addition, all units can for instance be installed in containers and thus be used in mobile applications.

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