When allowed into rivers, stream and especially wetlands, oils create havoc and pollute our precious natural water resources.
Allen Cockfield of Artic Driers points out that recent legislation makes the CEO financially personally liable for pollution allowed into a storm water drain or a natural watercourse. This pollution would also include oily water from a compressed air system.
Disposal drawbacks
After-coolers, refrigeration compressed air dryers and filters condense hundreds of litres of oily waste water a month in the process of drying compressed air to a state suitable to use as a motive power source in a modern production facility.
There are limited ways to dispose of this oily waste water:
* Allow it down a storm water drain and face possible prosecution and fines.
* Contain it in a bulk container for disposal by an authorised waste disposal company.
Allowing pollutants down a drain is neither socially or environmentally acceptable. ISO ratings can easily be lost if malpractice is detected and offenders will attract hefty fines for their CEO.
Bulk oily liquid containment is messy, wastes space and increases operational costs, as waste disposal fees are based on volume and are very high.
Two-stage filtration
Two-stage filtration can overcome the shortcomings of these two disposal methods – raising the water quality to a state in which it can be legitimately run to drain and reducing the waste volume by holding back only the oil content.
Following these principles, the Sepura range of oily water separators is a simple solution for treating the oily waste water generated by a compressor system. The first filtration stage separates heavy oils from the water and the second stage removes the last traces of oil using an activated carbon filter.
Oils are retained in the final filter bag leaving clear clean water to legally flow into the storm drain. Because the oil content within the waste condensate entering the filter is low in comparison to the water content, extracting the oils means that the volume of waste to be handled is greatly reduced. Bags are easily and quickly disposed of legally by a qualified waste disposal company.
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