OUTPUT

Polymeric resins are being tried as an alternative material for treating oily waters from the petroleum industry, which have already been treated by conventional methods 1. The objective of this work has been to evaluate the purification degree of synthetic oily waters when treated in fixed bed columns packed with polymeric resins made up of hydrophilic and lipophilic moieties. The analysis used for characterizing the total grease and oil content (TOG) was fluorimetry. Starting oily waters of average TOG 40 ppm were prepared. Data obtained from eluted waters did not outweigh 1 % of the TOG values of starting solutions. The kinetic study showed that the contaminant removal efficiency depends on the system elution flow rate; optimum removal values were reached at a 7.0 mL/min flow rate. High efficiency and speed in the purification process were obtained at this optimum flow rate. The Figure 1 shows that the passage of a water volume 1,000 times the volume of the column bed was not sufficient to observe its saturation level. After the column saturation, regeneration tests have been done using a mixture of solvents and the polymeric material has presented high recovery potential, so it can be used for another cycles of oily water treatment. A mixture of solvents is used to obtain a regeneration solvent with a range of solubility parameter comparable to that of contaminants adsorved in the column