Industrial pre-treatment
Oily sludge holding extractable petroleum hydrocarbons at a concentration that made disposal the only route available.
reduction in extractable petroleum hydrocarbons
01The plant
Two land-treatment cells of one to two acres, built beside the waste reservoirs of a crude oil refinery in Central America.
02Before
7,300 cubic yards of oily sludge had collected in the reservoirs over eight years, at an extractable petroleum hydrocarbon concentration of 79,000 mg/kg and made up mostly of C₁₄ to C₄₀ chains. Landfill and incineration were the alternatives being priced. A US engineering firm led the project, and the target was to get the average below 10,000 ppm as quickly as it could be done.
03Treatment
The sludge was dredged out, mixed with soil, lime and Portland cement to bulk and stabilise it, spread across the cells, graded, tilled and fertilised with nitrogen and phosphorus. A dry hydrocarbon-degrading blend went on after that, was rehydrated immediately and tilled in. From there the cells were tilled at least weekly to keep them mixed and aerated.
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 the mass of material spread across the cells. A land-treatment cell is dosed by what it holds, not by a flow or by a volume of water, and everything about the basis here belongs to soil treatment rather than to a lagoon.
05Method
Twenty samples taken across the cells at ninety days, against a baseline drawn from the blended sludge-and-soil mixture at the point the blend was applied.
06Outcome
Those three areas were tilled hard to get oxygen into them, and the project closed.
At the start
Baseline of the blended mixture averaging 29,195 ppm extractable petroleum hydrocarbons.
At the close
9,395 ppm at ninety days. Three of the twenty samples were still above the 10,000-ppm limit, all of them from spots that had stood water-saturated for much of the period.
07Limits
Read the two starting numbers together. The sludge itself held 79,000 mg/kg; the baseline that sixty-eight per cent is measured against is 29,195 ppm, after the sludge had been mixed with soil, lime and cement. Dilution accounts for some part of the gap and the record does not say how much. Nor can the blend be separated from the rest of the work: the cells were fertilised, graded and tilled weekly for ninety days, and tilling oily soil degrades hydrocarbons on its own. Nothing was left untreated. This is soil bioremediation, which SediLogic does not supply.
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
Industrial1 year
reported annual saving on carbon dosing
Organic load being carried by powdered activated carbon, at a cost that rose with every increase in the feed.
Industrial pre-treatment
MunicipalNot published
reduction in total petroleum hydrocarbons
Total petroleum hydrocarbons in a separator at more than two hundred times the discharge limit, with pumping the only route to compliance.
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.
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.
