Water Reuse in an Oil Refinery: An Innovative Solution Using Membrane Technology

An oil refinery located in Texas, USA is interested in reusing wastewater as process water to achieve two objectives: reduce its potable water consumption and reduce wastewater disposal costs. A pilot study was performed to demonstrate the feasibility of reusing treated wastewater as makeup water for boiler feed and cooling tower. The pilot system consisted of three unit operations: ZeeWeed® ultrafiltration (UF), strong acid cation exchange softening (IX) and reverse osmosis (RO). The pilot installation operated successfully and consistently achieved reuse water quality that far exceeded the requirements for boiler feed water makeup and cooling tower makeup. These results indicated that the current amount of wastewater being discharged can be reduced by more than 50% with the application of this water reuse solution.