The application of ultrafiltration for treatment of ships generated oily wastewater

The wastewaters collected from ships were preliminary separated in harbour installation into an oil fraction (slop oil) and the aqueous phase. The oil phase was then separated from slop oil, and the resulting water phase was subjected to the treatment in a coagulation/flotation process. The effluent (oil content 7–13 ppm) from these processes was further purified in biological wastewater treatment plant. A composition of bilge water is variable what affects the efficiency of coagulation/flotation process and the effluents may contain a significant amount of oil residues. The purification of effluents from coagulation/flotation process was performed in this work with ultrafiltration (UF), using FP100 membranes. The turbidity of obtained UF permeate was varied in the range of 0.08–0.26 NTU and the oil content was at a level of 0.9–1.1 ppm. Such purified water can be utilized for rinsing the oil–water separation devices located in the wastewater treatment plant, instead of tap water used so far. The obtained UF retentate contained 30 ppm of oil can be recycled to the coagulation/flotation process. Fouling of UF membranes was observed during the separation process, however, the FP100 membranes were effective cleaned with alkaline cleaning agents P3 Ultrasil 11.