Dewatering of floated oily sludge by treatment with rhamnolipid

Visualization of water transfer channel in sludge dewatering conditioned with skeleton builders by X-ray micro-computed tomography

Skeleton builders were normally deemed to improve the high porosity and newly-generated permeability of sludge cakes by building water transfer channel during high pressure filtration, thus enhancing sludge dewaterability. However, currently a direct visualization proof of water transfer channel was still lacking. This study provided the direct proof for visualizing water transfer channel in dewatered sludge cakes conditioned with a typical skeleton builder (i.e., phosphogypsum (PG)) by X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) for the first time. After the addition of PG, the pixel value and image luminance increased significantly, indicating the presence of high density substances from both two-dimensional (2D) cross section and three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction CT images. Moreover, the CT numbers showed strong and negative correlations with specific resistance to filtration (SRF) (R = - 0.99, p < 0.05), capillary suction time (CST) (regression coefficient (R) = - 0.87, probability (p) < 0.05), and water content of the dewatered sludge cake (R = - 0.99, p < 0.05), respectively. These results indicated that the X-ray micro-CT could be a potential technique for analyzing the water distribution in sludge samples conditioned with skeleton builders.

Research progress in improving sludge dewaterability: sludge characteristics, chemical conditioning and influencing factors

Sludge from wastewater treatment processes with high water content and large volume has become an inevitable issue in environmental management. Due to the challenging dewatering properties of sludge, current mechanical dewatering methods are no longer sufficient to meet the escalating water content standards of sludge. This paper summarizes the characteristics of various sludge and raises reasons for the their dewaterability differences. Affected by extracellular polymeric substances, biological sludge is hydrophilic and negatively charged, which limits the dewatering degree. The rheological properties, flocs, ionic composition, and solid phase concentration of the sludge also influence the dewatering to some extent. For these factors, the chemical conditioning measures with simple operation and excellent effect improve its dewaterability, which mainly include flocculation/coagulation, acid/alkali treatment, advanced oxidation, surfactant treatment and combined treatment. There is a growing necessity to explore the development of new chemical conditioning agents, even though traditional agents continue to remain widely used. However, the development of these new agents should prioritize finding a balance between various factors such as efficiency, effectiveness, ease of operation, environmental safety, and cost-effectiveness. Electrochemical dewatering enhances solid-liquid separation, and its coupling with chemical conditioning is also an excellent means to further reduce water content. In addition, the improvement of press filter is an effective way, which is influenced by pressure, processing time, sludge cake thickness and pore structure, filter media etc. In general, it is essential to develop new conditioning agents and enhance mechanical filtration press technology based on a thorough understanding of various sludge properties. Concurrently, an in-depth study of the principles of mechanical pressure filtration will contribute to establishing a theoretical foundation for effective deep sludge dewatering and propel further advancements in this field.

Petroleum sludge formation and its treatment methodologies: a review

Different petroleum operations produce huge amount of oil sludge annually. For instance, US EPA estimates the annual sludge production of each US refinery of 30,000 tons, while the average oily sludge produced from petrochemical industries in China is estimated about 3 million tons per year. In the last year, our center could recover about 30,206 barrels of raw oil from 32,786 barrels of tank bottom sludge (TBS) for different petroleum companies. This sludge causes huge economic losses besides its negative environmental impacts. The accumulation of sludge in the tanks results in reducing the tanks' capacity for storing liquid crude, accelerating the corrosion of the tanks, delay in the production schedule, and disturbing the whole production operation. There are diverse treatment methodologies such as solvent treatment, addition of certain chemicals, and centrifuging. Of course, the environmental regulations and the overall cost limitations are very important in deciding the preferred applicable method(s). Although several works handled the problem of sludge deposition and treatment from different aspects, we intend to introduce a different work. First, composition, formation, types, and properties of TBS were reviewed. Then, environmental and economic problems caused by TBS were revised. At last, different methodologies applied for treatment of oily TBS to recover oil and safe disposal of hazardous remains were investigated focusing on the most straightforward and environmentally friendly protocols. It is expected that this review attracts the experts in petroleum chemistry, and other relevant fields and provides a comprehensive understanding of current sludge control and treatment research.

Trend in Research on Characterization, Environmental Impacts and Treatment of Oily Sludge: A Systematic Review

Oily sludge is a hazardous material generated from the petroleum industry that has attracted increasing research interest. Although several review articles have dealt with specific subtopics focusing on the treatment of oily sludge based on selected references, no attempt has been made to demonstrate the research trend of oily sludge comprehensively and quantitatively. This study conducted a systematic review to analyze and evaluate all oily sludge-related journal articles retrieved from the Web of Science database. The results show that an increase in oily sludge-related research did not take place until recent years and the distribution of the researchers is geographically out of balance. Most oily sludge-related articles focused on treatment for harmfulness reduction or valorization with limited coverage of formation, characterization, and environmental impact assessment of oily sludge. Pyrolytic treatment has attracted increasing research attention in recent years. So far, the research findings have been largely based on laboratory-scale experiments with insufficient consideration of the cost-effectiveness of the proposed treatment methods. Although many methods have been proposed, few alone could satisfactorily achieve cost-effective treatment goals. To enable sustainable management of oily sludge on a global scale, efforts need to be made to fund more research projects, especially in the major oil-producing countries. Pilot-scale experiments using readily available and affordable materials should be encouraged for practical purposes. This will allow a sensible cost-benefit analysis of a proposed method/procedure for oily sludge treatment. To improve the treatment performance, combined methods are more desirable. To inform the smart selection of methods for the treatment of different oily sludge types, it is suggested to develop universally accepted evaluation systems for characterization and environmental risk of oily sludge.

The Formation, Stabilization and Separation of Oil–Water Emulsions: A Review

Oil–water emulsions are widely generated in industries, which may facilitate some processes (e.g., transportation of heavy oil, storage of milk, synthesis of chemicals or materials, etc.) or lead to serious upgrading or environmental issues (e.g., pipeline plugging, corrosions to equipment, water pollution, soil pollution, etc.). Herein, the sources, classification, formation, stabilization, and separation of oil–water emulsions are systematically summarized. The roles of different interfacially active materials–especially the fine particles–in stabilizing the emulsions have been discussed. The advanced development of micro force measurement technologies for oil–water emulsion investigation has also been presented. To provide insights for future industrial application, the separation of oil–water emulsions by different methods are summarized, as well as the introduction of some industrial equipment and advanced combined processes. The gaps between some demulsification processes and industrial applications are also touched upon. Finally, the development perspectives of oil–water treatment technology are discussed for the purpose of achieving high-efficiency, energy-saving, and multi-functional treatment. We hope this review could bring forward the challenges and opportunities for future research in the fields of petroleum production, coal production, iron making, and environmental protection, etc.

Novel conditioner for efficient dewaterability and modification of oily sludge with high water content

The oily sludge with high water content (OS) was dewatered, modified, and converted into solid fuel by a novel chemical conditioner (OSO-101). The effect of OSO-101 dosage on the dewaterability of OS was studied, showing that OSO-101 dosage of 15% (wt.) could achieve the best dewaterability efficiency of OS (98.18%). Meanwhile, compared with some conventional conditioners, OSO-101 developed by our team was more effective in improving OS dewaterability efficiency. And OSO-101 may have free radical reaction, polar reaction, and redox reaction with petroleum hydrocarbons in OS, thereby polymerizing and forming condensed solid structures. The calorific value change of OS after conditioning, heavy metal content, and dioxin content of fly ash leached from incinerated product were measured for resource analysis and environmental assessment. Results showed that the resultant OS fuel blocks had extremely low content of heavy metals, dioxins, and other toxic and hazardous substances leached from fly ash. And this process did not require secondary treatment and fully met environmental protection emission standards. Additionally, OSO-101 had certain economic rationality and could effectively recover the calorific value contained in OS. This research is expected to provide new insights for efficient dewaterability and modification of OS, as well as subsequent resource utilization and harmless treatment, bringing potential environmental and economic benefits.

Application of a Fenton process for the pretreatment of an iron-containing oily sludge: A sustainable management for refinery wastes

The feasibility of a Fenton-type process for the pretreatment of an oily refinery sludge has been explored taking advantage of the iron contained in the own sludge. This process reduces the content of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) accompanied by an increase in the total organic carbon concentration in the liquid phase. The effect of the temperature and the hydrogen peroxide loading was thoroughly studied in this work being the oxidant concentration the most critical parameter. Under 60 °C and 90 g/L of initial hydrogen peroxide concentration, the Total Organic Carbon (TOC) of the liquid phase was increased up values of 1336 mg/L and with a remarkable contribution of acetic acid as final oxidized compound (396 mgC/L). Additionally, nitrogen and phosphorous compounds were also dissolved in the aqueous phase achieving values of 250 mg/L and 7 mg/L for total Kjeldahl nitrogen and total phosphorous, respectively. Respirometry assays of the aqueous phase after the Fenton pretreatment have evidenced an increase of biodegradability up to 49% which makes this phase suitable for further biological processing in the refinery scheme. The reduction of the content of TPHs (61%) of the oily sludge, has also improved the settleability of the treated effluent (reducing the capillary suction time (CST) in ca. 88%).

Effect of Oily Sludge Treatment with Molten Blast Furnace Slag on the Mineral Phase Reconstruction of Water-Quenched Slag Properties

Blast furnace slag, which is the main by-product of the ironmaking process discharged at 1450 °C, contains high-quality sensible heat, while oily sludge is the main solid waste produced in the process of gas exploration, storage, and transportation. The energy and resource utilization of blast furnace slag is complementary to the environmentally friendly treatment of oily sludge, which has provided a new idea for the multi-factor synergistic cycle and energy transformation of the two wastes. The pyrolysis of the oily sludge with the molten blast furnace slag was conducted in the current paper. Results showed that the oily sludge was rapidly pyrolyzed, and the heavy metal elements in the oily sludge were solidified. The solidification rate of the heavy metals exceeds 90%, except for vanadium. The reconstituted water-quenched blast furnace slag still has good activity, and it will not affect the further use of the slag after pyrolysis (BFS-P).

Hydrothermal treatment combined with in-situ mechanical compression for floated oily sludge dewatering

Due to the high moisture content of the oily sludge, the conventional use of oily sludge treatment presents poor feasibility in industrial applications. Hence, finding an efficient and energy-saving technology is still an urgent need for the dewatering of oily sludge. In this paper, an innovative method combining hydrothermal treatment (HT) and in-situ mechanical compression (MC) for dewatering of floated oily sludge (FOS) was proposed. Series of experiments on HT&MC were conducted to verify the method. 77-96 wt% of water can directly be separated from FOS by the HT&MC treatment under the temperature of 120-240 °C and residence times of 10-60 min. The bound water content in raw and HT&MT treated FOS were measured by employing the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to evaluate the dewatering ability. The result of DSC illustrates the freezing peaks shifted from -11.1 °C to -21.2 °C as the diameter of water droplets reduced. Meanwhile, the comprehensive characterization analysis of products, including chemical oxygen demand (COD), NH4⁺-N, and gas chromatograph (GC) were conducted. All results indicated that HT&MC is advisable for dewatering of oily sludge.

Application of biosurfactant surfactin as a pH-switchable biodemulsifier for efficient oil recovery from waste crude oil

Efficient oil separation is the most desirable, but still challenging solution for the waste crude oil problem. This study developed biosurfactant surfactin as a novel pH-switchable biodemulsifier for efficient oil separation. As found, surfactin demulsification achieved a quite well oil separation ratio of over 95% on model emulsions after 20 min at 50 °C. The validity of this demulsification process should be mainly based on the readily lost stabilization ability of surfactin in emulsions triggered by acid addition. Then, surfactin (0.2 g/L) treatment with the aid of ethanol (2%) to improve its distribution could recover over 95% of oil from waste crude oil. After treated by surfactin, the separated oil phase contains tiny water (less than 0.5%) and thus can be reused for resource recycling to reach a compromised balance between satisfying the strict environmental regulations and decreasing the high treatment costs. Hence, in consideration of high demulsification efficiency, environmental-friendly properties and cost-efficiency, surfactin has a great potential for industrial applications for oil recovery from waste crude oil which is a severe problem presents in most of the petroleum-related factories.

Recent progress towards industrial rhamnolipids fermentation: Process optimization and foam control

The global market for rhamnolipids production holds great promise, and is in need of an economically viable mass-production scheme. Accordingly, several strategies have been employed to improve the efficiency of rhamnolipid production in the past few decades. Currently, rhamnolipids can be produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa at a high yield (over 70 g/L) when vegetable oil is used as the carbon source under optimized fed-batch cultivations. However, severe foaming during rhamnolipid fermentation inhibits scaling-up and production efficiency. Stop valve was found to effective break the extremely stable rhamnolipids foams during fermentation, and production efficiency of rhamnolipids was highly improved, while its scale-up mechanism needs further study. In addition, the combination of both chemical and mechanical approaches is likely to be more efficiently resolving the foam problem existed in rhamnolipids fermentation than either chemical or mechanical methods alone.

High Di-rhamnolipid Production Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa KT1115, Separation of Mono/Di-rhamnolipids, and Evaluation of Their Properties

Rhamnolipids (RLs) are important bioproducts that are regarded as promising biosurfactant for applications in oil exploitation, cosmetics, and food industry. In this study, the newly isolated Pseudomonas aeruginosa KT1115 showed high production of di-RLs. The highest yield of RLs by P. aeruginosa KT1115, reaching 44.39 g/L after 8 days of fermentation in a 5 L bioreactor, was obtained from rapeseed oil-nitrate medium after process optimization. Furthermore, we established a new separation process that achieved up to 91.82% RLs recovery with a purity of 89% and further obtained mono/di-rhamnolipids. Finally, ESI-MS analysis showed that the RLs produced by strain KT1115 have a high proportion of di-RLs (mono-RLs: di-RLs = 11.47: 88.53), which have a lower critical micelle-forming concentration (8 mN/m) and better emulsification ability with kerosene (52.1% EI₂₄) than mono-RLs (167 mN/m and 41.4% EI₂₄, respectively). These results demonstrated that P. aeruginosa KT1115 is a potential industrial producer of di-RLs, which have improved applicability and offer significant commercial benefits.

Nanoremediation of cadmium contaminated river sediments: Microbial response and organic carbon changes

The application of nanomaterials to contaminated river sediments could induce important changes in the speciation of heavy metals with potential impacts on ecosystem. Here, rhamnolipid (RL)-stabilized nanoscale zero-valent iron (RNZVI) was conducted to test its potential performance in changing the mobility and speciation of cadmium (Cd) in river sediments, with consideration of the influences of microbial community and organic carbon (OC). Compared to NZVI, RNZVI was more effective in transforming labile Cd to stable fraction with a maximum residual concentration increasing by 11.37 mg/kg after 42 days of incubation. Bacterial community structure was tracked using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. Results indicated that the application of RNZVI changed the bacterial community structure and increased the relative abundance of Fe(III)-reducing bacteria, which could redistribute Fe combined Cd into a more stable Fe mineral phase. The contents of OC were gradually decreased and became stable, might resulting from OC bioavailability's being stimulated by RNZVI through changing the bacterial community composition. This study indicates that abiotic process (i.e., from reaction with NZVI) and biotic process fueled by RNZVI lead to the immobilization of Cd in river sediments.

Nanoscale zero-valent iron coated with rhamnolipid as an effective stabilizer for immobilization of Cd and Pb in river sediments

Nanoremediation strategies applied to contaminated river sediments can induce changes in the mobility and bioavailability of metals with potential consequences on ecosystem health. In this study, the performance of rhamnolipid (RL) coated nanoscale zero-valent iron (NZVI) in immobilizing cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) from contaminated river sediments was investigated. We demonstrated that RNZVI was effective in transforming labile Cd and Pb to stable fraction (the maximum residual percentage of Cd and Pb increased by 56.40% and 43.10% after 42days of incubation, respectively), with the decrease of the mobility of metals. The increase of pH in NZVI and RNZVI treated sediment samples indicated the related mechanism for Cd and Pb immobilization. The contents of organic matter (OM) were higher than in control, with the initial addition of RL during 7days incubation, and then the contents gradually decreased and became stable, maybe resulting from the enhancement of the activity of microorganisms and the decomposition of OM. Urease and catalase activities were enhanced with the increase of incubation time, showing certain degrees of recovery in sediment metabolic function. This work provides a new insight into the potential effects of RNZVI applications on the Cd and Pb immobilization in contaminated river sediments.

Toward high-efficiency production of biosurfactant rhamnolipids using sequential fed-batch fermentation based on a fill-and-draw strategy

Rhamnolipids are the most promising biosurfactants, have widespread applications in many fields. However, low yield and productivity in fermentation caused a high production cost and thus prohibited the bulk applications of rhamnolipids in industry. In this study, a sequential fed-batch fermentation process with fill-and-draw operation was developed to improve rhamnolipids production. By utilizing this strategy, the total produced rhamnolipids reached over 150g/L, had a 163% and 102% increase over the traditional batch and fed-batch processes, respectively. This remarkable high production efficiency was achieved by the well-maintained high productivity of 0.4g/Lh for a period of 17 d. Astonishingly, the conversion yield was high as 84%, while this value was only 53.2% and 42.7% in the traditional batch and fed-batch process, respectively. The high-efficiency rhamnolipids production in this sequential fed-batch fermentation could be largely explained by a high presence of cell coupled with the replenishment of nutrients and dilution of toxic byproducts via fill-and-draw operation. In all, this validated fermentation strategy offers a great prospect for high-efficiency production of rhamnolipids in industry.

Enhanced rhamnolipids production via efficient foam-control using stop valve as a foam breaker

In this study, a stop valve was used as a foam breaker for dealing with the massive overflowing foam in rhamnolipid fermentation. As found, a stop valve at its tiny opening could break over 90% of the extremely stable rhamnolipid foam into enriched liquid when foam flows through the sharp gap in valve. The efficient foam-control by the stop valve considerably improved the rhamnolipid fermentation and significantly enhanced the rhamnolipid productivity by 83% compared to the regular fermentation. This efficient foam breaking was mainly achieved by a high shear rate in combination with fast separation of air from the collapsed foam. Altogether, the stop valve possessed a great activity in breaking rhamnolipid foam, and the involving mechanism holds the potential for developing efficient foam breakers for industrial rhamnolipid fermentation.

Application of Fenton's reagent combined with sawdust on the dewaterability of oily sludge

Fenton's reagent and sawdust were used on the dewaterability of the raw oily sludge in this study. The result shows that the combination of the two treatment processes is favorable, although the application of Fenton's reagent only is not so good. The capillary suction time (CST) and specific resistance to filtration (SRF) were used to evaluate the effect of dewaterability of the raw oily sludge, and the CST and SRF values are reduced from 1,760 s and 13.8 × 10(12) m/kg to 185 s and 1.5 × 10(12) m/kg, respectively. The dry matter contents of sludge cakes and properties of the supernatant all gained when using only the Fenton's reagent and when using the combined treatment with Fenton's reagent and sawdust respectively were investigated. The results indicate that the oily sludge is more suitable for further treatment after combined process with Fenton's reagent and sawdust.