Industrial pre-treatment
Floc that would not form reliably in the basin, with the compliance consequence of losing it measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
a day of loss reported as avoided
01The plant
The aeration basin of a petroleum refinery taking water separated from crude piped in from a rig about three miles offshore, by way of an anaerobic filter and then a conventional activated-sludge stage. Typical flow through the works is 1,800 gallons a minute.
02Before
Compounds arriving in that water were inhibiting the biomass. The basin could not hold an active population much above 1,800 mg/L mixed liquor suspended solids, floc would not form reliably, dissolved oxygen ran low and clarifier performance went with it. Below that range the refinery's oil and grease breach its permit and production has to be slowed, which the plant costs at two hundred thousand dollars a day. Chemical additives had not held it.
03Treatment
Two blends dosed together into the aeration basins, one aimed at the hydrocarbon itself and one at building floc and carrying the mixed liquor up to a working concentration. Both went in twice a day through the initial phase.
Every result in this library was measured at an operating plant treating with one of the formulations SediLogic supplies, over the window stated above. It is a field result published as reported, not a controlled trial we ran.
04Sizing
Against mixed liquor suspended solids, not against volume or flow. Dosing ran continuously while the population was being built, and now resumes only when MLSS falls back to a trigger figure; a hydrocarbon spike raises it again until the system recovers. The trigger belongs to that basin and to no other.
05Outcome
Four years without a production slowdown, on the refinery's own account.
At the start
Mixed liquor struggling above about 1,800 mg/L, floc poor, dissolved oxygen low, clarifier performance compromised.
At the close
Mixed liquor held near 4,000 mg/L, with production running unslowed for four years.
06Limits
Two hundred thousand dollars a day is a loss avoided, not a saving banked — it is what the refinery calculates a slowdown would cost, and no slowdown happened to measure it against. Two products went in at once and neither can be separated from the other. Nothing was left untreated, the refinery is not named, and four years is long enough that crude quality, plant practice and the people running it will all have changed inside it.
Only the volatile organic fraction of a sludge responds to any of this. Grit, sand, silt, mineral precipitates and plastics remain at any dose, here and everywhere else.
—What we would supply
Liquid is intended for industrial systems with metered or poured dosing. If the target is settled sludge in a holding basin, discuss a sinking solid and the appropriate application method.
Our written dose tables cover wastewater lagoons. Industrial streams vary considerably, so other applications need a separate review and dose instructions for the specific use.
—Read next
Industrial pre-treatment
IndustrialNot published
a day reported as recovered
Phenol in the feed and filamentous growth in the basin, together costing the plant its settling.
Industrial pre-treatment
IndustrialWeeks
ammonia removal
A nitrifying population that would not establish itself, leaving ammonia removal at less than a third of what the permit assumed.
Nitrifying organisms do not survive drying. No product in SediLogic's dry range addresses an ammonia or total-nitrogen permit, and this record is published as part of the field record rather than as an offer.
Industrial pre-treatment
Industrial90 days
reduction in extractable petroleum hydrocarbons
Oily sludge holding extractable petroleum hydrocarbons at a concentration that made disposal the only route available.
Your lagoon next
This result came from a different plant. Your sludge composition and operating conditions need their own assessment. Send us your lagoon details for a dosing review; do not use the quantity on this page as your application rate.
