Mechanistic Study and Multi‐Response Optimization of the Electrochemical Treatment of Petroleum Refinery Wastewater

Abstract

Petroleum refinery wastewater (PRW) is refractory in nature. Electrochemical (EC) treatment of PRW can remove toxic pollutants present in it. The present paper deals with the treatment of the PRW in a batch EC reactor using stainless steel electrodes. Parametric optimization is carried out using full factorial central composite design to maximize the removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and the total organic carbon (TOC). The mechanism of COD and TOC removal is elucidated by carrying out zeta potential measurement, UV–vis spectroscopy, and Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Under optimized operating conditions of initial pH:6, current density = 182 A m−2, electrode gap = 1.5 cm, and time = 145 min, the removal efficiency of COD and TOC is found to be 62 and 52%, respectively. The sludge generated during EC treatment is characterized by FTIR, elemental and thermo‐gravimetric analysis.

Treatment of wastewater from petroleum industry: current practices and perspectives

“…Petroleum industry generates large amount of oily waste either solid or liquid due to upstream and downstream operations (Varjani and Upasani 2017). Upstream process includes extracting, transporting and storing crude oil and downstream process includes refining of crude oil (Al-Futaisi et al 2007;Hu et al 2013;Thakur et al 2018). Depending on a ratio of water and solids waste is categorized into simple wastewater crude oil or sludge.…”

“…Oily wastewater contains mainly four major types of petroleum hydrocarbons such as aliphatic, aromatic, asphaltenes and compounds containing oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. It consists organo-metallic complexes with cadmium, lead, nickel and vanadium (Honse et al 2012;Varjani and Upasani 2017;Thakur et al 2018). Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of oily wastewater/effluents and standards for their discharge in environment.…”

“…Petroleum industry discharge huge amount of pollutants in environment. Wastewater released by the petroleum industries contain large quantities of hydrocarbons, heavy metals, phenols and other toxic chemicals (Perera et al 2012;Jasmine and Mukherji 2015;Thakur et al 2018;. Different activities of petroleum industry such as transportation, storage, drilling etc.…”

“…Many research groups are focusing their work on recovery of various resources such as energy, bio-products, nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous), metals from wastewater generated by anthropogenic activities (Li and Yu 2011;Honse et al 2012;Varjani and Upasani 2017;Mohan et al 2018;Thakur et al 2018;Varjani et al 2019). Valuable pollutants are present in petroleum industrial wastewaters, which can be regarded as resources after recovery (Al-Futaisi et al 2007;Hu et al 2013;Jasmine and Mukherji 2015).…”

Enhanced reduction of COD in water associated with natural gas production using iron-based nanoparticles

“…Discharging the formation water in natural water sources without effective treatment will be toxic to living organisms and have harmful impacts on the environment. 2,[10][11][12][13] Formation water produced by the petroleum industry contains large quantities of pollutants that can badly affect the components of the environment, including human health, different water resources, air, crop production, aquatic life, etc. In addition, formation water from gas production is more toxic than that produced from oil because it contains high contents of hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, and xylene, which causes many problems such as dehydration and death of plants due to high salinity and damage to aquatic species because of reducing oxygen level (high levels of COD and BOD), scale problem and environmental impact due to chemical additives like corrosion inhibitors, methanol and biocides.…”