Photo of a petrochemical refinery facility

Petrochemicals & Microplastics

Water solutions for refineries and other petrochemical processes

Saltworks can help meet the unique challenges of petrochemical industry wastewater treatment by boosting water recovery, saving energy, and lowering costs. Applications include process waters such as cooling tower blowdown, removing microplastics, and treating wastewater with oils, grease, heavy metals, ammonia, and more.

Petrochemical Wastewaters

Oil refineries use water for cooling systems, cleaning equipment, steam stripping, and desalting. Water may have come into contact with hydrocarbon products, making treatment or disposal challenging. Saltworks can help treat these waters for discharge or internal recycling, with increased recovery and lower costs. We provide complete, factory-built systems to:

  • Filter suspended solids & hydrocarbons
  • Selectively remove chlorides & dissolved solids
  • Target contaminants such as heavy metals, scaling ions, & ammonia
  • Recycle cooling tower blowdown with over 98% recovery
  • Reduce wastewater volume, even to minimal liquid discharge (MLD) or zero liquid discharge (ZLD)
Photo of a pond of highly turbid produced water containing oils and grease in the oil and gas industry
Photo of a petrochemical refinery facility

Process Water Treatment & Brine Management

Saltworks’ solutions treat process waters, reverse osmosis brines, ion exchange regeneration wastes, and other wastewaters. Our experts can help you develop a strategy to understand options and minimize total installed cost.

 

Our robust XtremeUF ultrafiltration systems remove particles, oil, and grease. Our advanced XtremeRO and OARO membrane concentrators cost-effectively maximize recovery from saline wastewaters. After optimizing membrane system recovery, our SaltMaker family of modular, fully packaged evaporator-crystallizers can help you achieve MLD or ZLD.

Chlorides and Desalters

Many crude oils contain chlorides, which must be washed out prior to refining. Desalters wash crude oil with low salinity water, moving chlorides from the crude to the water. This wastewater is typically blown down and replaced with freshwater.

 

FlexEDR makes it possible to selectively remove chlorides so wastewater can be recycled back to the desalter. It acts like a kidney in your wastewater circuit by pulling chlorides (and its counter cation) from a solution. Hydrocarbons are well tolerated and don’t need to be removed, avoiding complex processing steps and enabling higher recovery.

Photo of a FlexEDR E150 stack with a transparent background
Photo of a filter press with precipitated, filtered solids underneath

Metals

Petrochemical wastewater treatment may require removal of heavy metals such as arsenic, nickel, and cobalt. Producing amorphous solids may be desired which requires a high rate of slurry thickening and pressing. A reliable treatment solution must react to process condition changes, avoid plugging, and reliably extract solids.

 

Our modular BrineRefine chemical reactor meets these objectives. Designed with advanced automation and simple solids management, BrineRefine achieves 100% water recovery in heavy metal removal applications, generating a solid filter cake as the only waste product.

Microplastics

Saltworks’ XtremeUF ultrafiltration systems with robust silicon carbide membranes provide reliable removal of microplastics and abrasive particles. SiC membranes provide the highest abrasion resistance of all UF membranes, ensuring a durable and robust separation surface, and withstand repeated automated mechanical cleans. The result is unmatched durability that reduces plant maintenance and extends filtration system lifespan. XtremeUF systems are also intelligently automated to detect fouling and initiate self-cleaning for optimal performance. Learn more about how XtremeUF can meet your microplastics removal needs.

 

Contact us to learn more about our solutions for petrochemical wastewaters and microplastics.

Microplastics

Related Products

photo of FlexEDR

FlexEDR Electrodialysis Reversal

FlexEDR is a next-gen electrodialysis reversal (EDR) system for industrial wastewater desalination, solving scaling issues & boosting recovery.

Related Resources

Cooling Tower Blowdown
Application

Cooling Tower Blowdown

Saltworks solves cooling tower blowdown challenges. We can help you reduce water usage and protect your assets by treating inlet water or recovering water from blowdown. We study your problem to help you optimize costs, recover water, and explore brine management strategies.

Contact Saltworks
Sign up for Updates