Oils and grease removal product name by Chemist chemical Man

The effective removal of oils and grease is dependent on the characteristics of the oil in terms of its suspension state and droplet size, which will, in turn, affect the choice of separator technology. Oil in industrial wastewater may be free light oil , heavy oil, which tends to sink, and emulsified oil often referred to as soluble oil. Emulsified or soluble oils will typically require "cracking" to free the oil from its emulsion. In most cases, this is achieved by lowering the pH of the water matrix.

Most separator technologies will have an optimum range of oil droplet sizes that can be effectively treated.

Analysing the oily water to determine droplet size can be performed with a video particle analyzer. Each separator technology will have its own performance curve outlining optimum performance based on oil droplet size. the most common separators are gravity tanks or pits, API oil-water separators or plate packs, chemical treatment via DAFs, centrifuges, media filters and hydrocyclones.

Many oils can be recovered from open water surfaces by skimming devices. Considered a dependable and cheap way to remove oil, grease and other hydrocarbons from water, oil skimmers can sometimes achieve the desired level of water purity. At other times, skimming is also a cost-efficient method to remove most of the oil before using membrane filters and chemical processes. Skimmers will prevent filters from blinding prematurely and keep chemical costs down because there is less oil to process.

Because grease skimming involves higher viscosity hydrocarbons, skimmers must be equipped with heaters powerful enough to keep grease fluid for discharge. If floating grease forms into solid clumps or mats, a spray bar, aerator or mechanical apparatus can be used to facilitate removal.

However, hydraulic oils and the majority of oils that have degraded to any extent will also have a soluble or emulsified component that will require further treatment to eliminate. Dissolving or emulsifying oil using surfactants or solvents usually exacerbates the problem rather than solving it, producing wastewater that is more difficult to treat.

The wastewaters from large-scale industries such as oil refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical plants, and natural gas processing plants commonly contain gross amounts of oil and suspended solids. Those industries use a device known as an API oil-water separator which is designed to separate the oil and suspended solids from their wastewater effluents. The name is derived from the fact that such separators are designed according to standards published by the American Petroleum Institute (API).

The API separator is a gravity separation device designed by using Stokes Law to define the rise velocity of oil droplets based on their density and size. The design is based on the specific gravity difference between the oil and the wastewater because that difference is much smaller than the specific gravity difference between the suspended solids and water. The suspended solids settle to the bottom of the separator as a sediment layer, the oil rises to the top of the separator and the cleansed wastewater is the middle layer between the oil layer and the solids.

Typically, the oil layer is skimmed off and subsequently re-processed or disposed of, and the bottom sediment layer is removed by a chain and flight scraper (or similar device) and a sludge pump. The water layer is sent to further treatment for additional removal of any residual oil and then to some type of biological treatment unit for removal of undesirable dissolved chemical compounds.
Parallel plate separators are similar to API separators but they include tilted parallel plate assemblies (also known as parallel packs). The parallel plates provide more surface for suspended oil droplets to coalesce into larger globules. Such separators still depend upon the specific gravity between the suspended oil and the water. However, the parallel plates enhance the degree of oil-water separation. The result is that a parallel plate separator requires significantly less space than a conventional API separator to achieve the same degree of separation.