A Study on Oil Sludge Fueling Treatment and Its Mechanism in Field Operations

Oil sludge mainly includes oil sludge from tank (at the bottom of tank), grease trap sediment, wastewater treatment plants residue, remainder of activated sludge remainder, and so on. The treatment and application of oil sludge is essential to environmental protection in oil and gas industry, but it is very hard to solve this problem. The oil sludge contains oil, benzene series, phenols, anthracene, pyrene, and other substances that are stinky and toxic. They are dangerous wastes defined by national laws. On the other hand, oil sludge contains plenty of hydrocarbons, whose potential energy is tremendous and high in calorific value, which is 5,000 kcal/kg on average. The great amount of oil sludge and its special components determine the necessity of recycling and innocuous treatment for the hydrocarbons. Based on lots of experiments, a new oil sludge fueling treatment agent is developed, which is composed of demulsifier, dispersing agent, ignition agent, and catalyst, so it can make the oil sludge break the emulsion quickly. The sludge after dehydration is not adherent and caked for one another. The sludge is easy to burn after drying and burns with coal as well. Both the boiler ash of dry oil sludge and the exhaust gas after burning with coal satisfy relevant emission standard in our country, and do not have influence on environment. Meanwhile, the authors also studied the functional mechanism of oil sludge treatment agent (drying agent) and analyze the effect and mechanism of every component of drying agent acting on oil sludge fueling. Using the oil sludge fueling technology, oil sludge can be processed into powder, and then burned with coal or used as shaped coal directly. This technology not only realizes zero emission of oil sludge required by environmental objectives, but also takes full advantage of the energy contained in residual oil in oil sludge, which realizes reutilization of oil sludge.