Benefits
- Adapted for oily waters
- Floating and settling products are available
- Environmental friendly
Oily water
Oily water is generated in many processes in for instance marine-, power- and oil field industries. Oil contaminated water is normally composed of free oil possible to separate by gravimetric settling or centrifugal separation and stable emulsions. Emulsions are often stabilised by mineral particles building up in the interface between the oil droplet surface and water or detergent molecules that prevent the oil droplets to coalesce.
The Lucent range of water treatment chemicals are designed to break up oil emulsions by destabilisation of the emulsion, combined with coagulation and flocculation of the oil droplets.
The Lucent Water Clean products is a two component system i.e., two chemicals are needed to achieve optimal separation result. First Water Clean 40A is added to the oily water to destabilise the oily water. As a second step is Water Clean 45F or Water Clean 46S added to coagulate the oil droplets.
The picture below show the effect when the two chemical formulations Water Clean 40A and Water Clean 45F have been dosed to highly contaminated oily water. The test tube to the right is the water achieved after decanting over the water phase from the middle test tube. The Water Clean products is working in a wide temperature range i.e., from cold to hot water.
Mechanism of the products
Water Clean 40A is composed of a non-ionic polymer in an alkaline solvent. When dosed to the oily water, the polymer destabilises particle- and/or surfactant stabilised oil droplets by collecting the particles and surfactant material. This will enable a better coalescence of the oil droplets when dosing the Water Clean 45F product. When dosing the product, the pH of the water will rise to a pH of 9.
Water Clean 45F is composed of a coagulant (metal salt) that will disturb the repulsive forces between the oil droplets and a strong cationic polymer that will flocculate the oil droplets. The Water Clean 45F is designed to make light flocculants that is floating, to be used in for example in a DAF-system.
A schematic picture explaining the performance of the chemicals are presented below.
In the top of the picture we see oil droplets sterically hindered by particles and surfactant material i.e., the oil droplets can not coalesce.
When dosing Water Clean 40A the oil droplets are no more sterically hindered but are repelling each other by negative surface charges
When dosing Water Clean 45F the oil droplets are coagulated and flocculated.