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Oily Water Separators History In 1948 a Water Pollution Act (WPA) was passed by the federal government. This act gave rights to the surgeon general of the public health service to make programs to decrease the amount of pollution in the world’s waters. The main concern was to save water, protect fish, and create adequate agricultural usage. This also helped to start in the process of building water treatment plants to guard against sewage from polluting drinking water. In 1972 the WPA was amended to include more requirements in order to insure that the water is chemically sound. This amendment also produced further regulations to insure the quality of the water (FWS, 2013). In 1987 the WPA was amended again to put an even more strict control on water supply pollution. With this new amendment water sources had to fit a specific set of criteria to fight against pollution. The act also starting looking and evaluating what goes into the waters, and determines whether they will lower the quality of water (EPA, 2012). Purpose The purpose of shipboard Oily Water Separator (OWS) is to separate oil and other contaminants that could be harmful for the oceans. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) publishes regulations through the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC). On January 1, 2005 the MEPC issued new regulations that each vessel built after this date had to follow. Each OWS must be able to achieve clean bilge water under 15 ppm of type C oil or heavily emulsified oil, and any other contaminates that may be found. All Oil Content Monitors (OCM) must not be able to be tampered with. Also whenever the OWS is being cleaned out the OCM must be active for zeroing it out. An OWS must be able to clear out contaminants as well as oil. Some of these contaminating agents include lubricating oil, cleaning product, soot from combustion, fuel oil, rust, sewage, and several other things that can be harmful to the ocean environment (Van Hemmen, SNAME). Bilge The Oily Water Separator (OWS) is the main transportation of the bilge. The Bilge area is the lowest area on a ship. This is where most of the liquid drains from things such as steam boilers, water purification systems and oil lab sink drains. The main places in this hull of the ship, where Bilge drains to is the main engine room, Auxiliary Machine rooms and shaft ally. This is where the water is collected and referred to as “bilgewater” or “oily waste water”. The bilgewater that collects here include drain/leftover water from the boilers, water collecting tanks, drinking water and other places where water can be overflowed. However, bilgewater doesn’t just include water drains. Another system that drains into the Bilge system comes from the propulsion area of the ship. Here fuels, lubricants, hydraulic fluid, antifreeze, solvents, cleaning chemicals also drain into the bilge system in small quantities. This is where the OWS system comes into play. Treatment and Transfer With all these additives in the bilgewater, things like oil, and other fluids, regulations have been made to treat this water. In order to treat this water, it needs to be circulated in an Oily Water Separator so that it can be transferred over board. Typical OWS systems must he contained in a Oily Waste Holding Tank (OWHT). From the OWHT the bilge water then travels, using gravity phased separation, coalescence beds, or centrifugal separation to proceed with the separation of the oil or other containments from the Bilgewater. Coalescing Plate Gravity Separator A Coalescing Plate Gravity Separator is the most common type of OWS. In this separator there is a main plate separator that contains oleophilic beds. In these beds water is filtered though millions of little oleophilic balls that attract oil and filter the water for overboard transportation. The left over dirty water is contained in the Waste Oil Tank (EPA, 1999).

Hunter Soules Hsoules1

Bibliography United States Environmental Protection Agency. (1999) Uniform National Discharge Standards. Retrived from http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/lawsguidance/cwa/vessel/unds/upload/2007_07_10_oceans_regulatory_unds_TDDdocuments_appAsurface.pdf United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Water Quality Standards History. Retrieved from http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/standards/history.cfm U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. (2013). Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act). Retrieved from http://www.fws.gov/laws/lawsdigest/FWATRPO.HTML Van Hemmen H. F. (unknown). Initial Recommendations for Bilge Oily Water Separator System Design and Operation. Retrieved from http://legacy.sname.org/committees/tech_ops/oilywater/meets06.pdf