Residual Fuel Oils

Recycling of all vegetable oil, cooking oils from the catering industry, recycled oil from the petroleum industry, and oil produced from rapeseed, can be an integral part into the production of bio fuels.

Throughout the world today the dumping of polluted products is a major concern to all governments worldwide, especially in developing countries, where the product is quite often dumped into sewage systems or into lakes, rivers and seas causing environmental problems.

Apart from the problems caused to the environment, it is a total waste of a natural high grade product which can be used very easily for production of bio fuel.

Especially when you consider in the USA the average price of recycled waste into bio fuel is selling at US$2.50 a gallon, and in the UK £0.87 a litre.

Handling of Waste Material

There are three ways today to get rid of this waste material:

A.     Dumping

Dumping polluted products and waste is obsolete since certain disastrous accidents have led most governments to forbid this way of disposal.

B.     Incineration

Incineration is a very expensive process. Refineries pay up to 3000 US$ per ton to cover the cost of cleaning, transport and incineration.

C.     Chemical Separation

Chemical separation is also very expensive and the product obtained by such processes has a low market value, as it can only be used as heating oil due to the chemical remains it contains.

BABCO’s New Solution – Centrifugation

The best solution today is to treat the sediment deposit by centrifugation, i.e. the physical separation of sludge components by centrifugal force. This new solution has the main advantage of recovering the oil product without altering its quality.

With the Centrifugation Treatment Unit (C.T.U.) it is now possible to separate efficiently the three elements contained in the deposit: sediments, water, oil.

Several trial tests carried out in the presence of internationally recognised organisations and under their control have allowed to recover 96-99% of the hydrocarbon contained in the tank deposits.

Utilisation

      1.            Treatment of used lubrication oils

The Centrifugation Treatment Unit treats the used lubrication oil. There are three possibilities:

A.     Direct the treated oils towards refining by regenerating the basic mineral oil.

B.     Direct the treated oils towards re-use as burning oil (10.500 calories). The oil obtained is comparable to fuel nº2

C.     Purify and regenerate the oils in factories

The treatment of used oils implies an organisation from the beginning:

A.     Collecting oils in garages, car repair shops and workshop factories where mineral oils are used as lubricant or cutting liquid.

B.     Storage of used mineral oils collected on site before proceeding with treatment by centrifugation. Foresee stocking for big volumes.

2.            Treatment of Residues and API Sludges in Refineries

This type of treatment by centrifugation requires storage facilities on site:

a)      For the product to be treated.

b)      For the product recovered after treatment.

The Centrifugation Treatment Unit can be movable or stationary, must be set up near the storage area in order to be able to operate continuously.

The regenerated product can either be directed towards the refinery, or for the re-use as burning oil.

3.      Treatment of Petrol Slops

This type of treatment by centrifugation has the same requirements as those above.

4.      Treatment of Residues or Petrol Sludges

This type of centrifugation treatment is mainly requested when cleaning petroleum storage tanks in refineries, storage fields, petroleum terminals, or petroleum production sites.

Quality of Recovered Product

The quality of the product recovered through the C.T.U. (mineral oils or crude petroleum) is very satisfactory for further use.

EXAMPLE: Products recovered from deposits after static decantation and

automatic filtration:

-   raw product containing:

Solids               4%

Water               24%

Total recovered hydrocarbon      72%

NOTE:

The C.T.U. used in the above example has a capacity of 9 m³ per hour at a temperature of 75ºC. 2 different samples were used.

The analysis of the water, oil and sludge drained shows the following figures:

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Drained Product                        Remaining Material

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            - Water                                    0.1% to 0.8% of oil

            - Oil                                         0.46% of light sediments

            - Sludge                          0.03% to 0.05% of hydrocarbon

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