CHEMICAL CLEANING OF EQUIPMENT AND PARTS OF DESALINATION PLANTS FOULED BY OIL SPILLS1

Chemical contamination of seawater feed by oil spills is a major threat to the safe oper-ation of desalination plants. Tar or residue which constitute about 55- 60 % of oil con-tent if cam’ed over to plant may deposit on the various parts of the plants adversely affecting product quality and equipment performance. Therefore, one should be able to clean the affected parts of the plant effectively and rapidly to avoid unscheduled plant shut down. This report describes the studies cam’ed out to find an effective solvent for easy and safe cleaning of plant equipment contaminated by oil spills. Laboratory scale experiments were carried out to evaluate several solvents such as xylene, hexane, car-bontetrachloride, and trichloroethane as safe, fast and cost effective decontaminating agent. Suitability of these solvents from health, toxicity and waste disposal aspects were also examined. Out of the four solvents tried it was found that carbon tetrachloride is superior to other chemicals in almost all aspects i.e. solubility of tar kinetics, health, toxicity and cost. This study was carried out as per the requirement of the R&D Center research and development task #5. 1