Difficulties in Wastewater Treatment in the Petrochemical Industry

Preface: Petroleum, as the "lifeblood" of industry, still plays a pivotal role in today's world. Whether as a power fuel or as a chemical raw material, there are still significant gaps in various products of petrochemicals. However, environmental issues constrain the production of various petrochemical products. Overcoming the difficulties in petrochemical wastewater treatment will determine whether petrochemical enterprises can have further development in the future, and even affect their survival.

Difficulties in Petrochemical Wastewater Treatment

For the petrochemical industry, the types of wastewater are very diverse, but they can generally be divided into the following categories:

1) Oily wastewater

The amount of oily wastewater is enormous, containing crude oil, light oil, heavy oil, production catalysts, and so on. It commonly exists in the form of emulsions, oil in water, and other forms, making it the most difficult point in the treatment of petroleum wastewater today.

2) Sulfur containing wastewater

The amount of sulfur-containing wastewater is relatively small, but the concentration of pollutants is high. Wastewater contains a large amount of hydrogen sulfide, which has a strong odor and high biological toxicity. It cannot enter general sewage treatment systems and requires special methods and equipment for treatment.

3) Salty wastewater

Salt containing wastewater is a major issue that urgently needs to be addressed in terms of operating costs. Conventional three effect evaporation or MVR technologies have extremely high operating costs and energy consumption, and high salt wastewater is highly harmful to common biochemical systems, requiring the search for other effective treatment methods.

4) High COD product wastewater

The petrochemical industry, especially downstream product industries such as synthetic plastics and synthetic rubber, contains a high amount of benzene and phenolic substances in its wastewater. This type of wastewater has a low B/C ratio and is difficult to biodegrade. Traditional or advanced oxidation cannot be achieved in one step, and it may generate a large amount of hazardous waste, which poses significant limitations and requires new methods to solve.

5) High chromaticity wastewater

After partial biochemistry or other pretreatment, the sewage has a certain degree of color, and oxidation is already very weak. Biochemical treatment cannot effectively remove color, so adsorption treatment becomes the best choice.

Haipu customized processing technology

Jiangsu Haipu Functional Materials Co., Ltd. is committed to the research and industrialization of high-performance adsorbents and catalysts. In 2018, it was approved as the Suzhou Adsorption and Catalytic Functional Nanomaterials Engineering Technology Research Center. Through years of independent research and development, it has achieved international leading levels in ion exchange technology and adsorption technology, nano inorganic material hybridization technology, etc., realizing the serialization of adsorption and catalytic products and successfully applying them in the fields of environmental protection and resource recycling.

With a series of independently developed high-performance adsorbents and catalysts as the core, combined with self-developed process technology, Haipu has become a professional supplier of green and environmental protection solutions.

The special adsorption materials developed by Haipu Company can selectively adsorb various types of harmful substances in wastewater, and can design targeted wastewater treatment methods for each process section. For example, common pollutants in the petrochemical industry, such as benzene and phenolic substances, can be adsorbed using specialized special adsorbents.

After adsorption saturation, specific desorption agents are used to desorb the adsorbent material, allowing it to regenerate, and this process is continuously repeated. The process flow of wastewater adsorption treatment is shown in the following figure.