Title: Oily-wastewater treatment using external electric field method

Authors: Reza Hajimohammadi; Sara Zamani; Morteza Hosseini

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran ' Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran ' Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran

Abstract: Some oily waste waters are like oil-in-water emulsion which causes a milky turbidity. For reducing the turbidity, the emulsion should be break. In this study, the electrical d-emulsification of oil in water emulsion in AC electric fields under various conditions was studied. External electric field or di-electrophoresis (DEP) was used to remove oil (oil of sunflower) from oil in water (o/w) emulsion. Turbidity was carried out by spectrophotometers in laboratory conditions. From obtained results, it was found that optimum voltage, temperature was about 150 V/mm and 38°C respectively by applying of constant frequency of 50 Hz. Nephelometric turbidity units (NTU) decreased from 180 to 292 approximately. The mean droplet size of oils droplet after separation process, reached to 200-400 microns. Maximum separation efficiency was about 75% at optimum condition. Therefore, d-emulsification of oily waste water using external electric field was proposed for petrochemical and oil industries wastewater treatment.

Keywords: di-electrophoresis; DEP; electric field; oil-in-water emulsion; oily waste water.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWM.2018.094104

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management, 2018 Vol.22 No.1/2/3/4, pp.182 - 191

Received: 10 Jul 2017
Accepted: 04 Oct 2017
Published online: 16 Aug 2018 *

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