30    ADVANCED OXIDATION TREATMENT OF HIGH
STRENGTH BILGE AND AQUEOUS PETROLEUM WASTE
Robert A. Hulsey, Process Engineer
Edmund A. Kobylinski, Process Engineer
Black & Veatch
Kansas City, Missouri 64114
Ben Leach, President
EEC, Inc.
Virginia Beach, Virginia 23452
Larry Pearce, President
TRITECH
Greensboro, North Carolina 27405
INTRODUCTION
The Craney Island Fuel Depot is the largest U.S. Navy fuel terminal in the continental United
States. The depot is located at the confluence of the Elizabeth and James rivers in Portsmouth,
Virginia. Services provided at this facility include fuel storage (current capacity is 1.5 million
barrels), fuel reclamation (recovery of oil from oily wastewater), and physical/chemical treatment for the removal of residual oil from bilge water and from aqueous petroleum waste. Current
wastewater treatment consists of storage/equalization, oil/water separation, dissolved air flotation, sand filtration, and carbon adsorption.
The Navy initiated this study to comply with the State requirement that its existing
physical/chemical oily wastewater treatment plant be upgraded to remove soluble organics and
produce an effluent which would meet acute toxicity limits. In 1990, the State Water Control
Board informed the Navy that its wastewater treatment plant must provide treatment for biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). The target BOD limit (based on the standard five-day test,
BOD5) proposed by the State was 26 mg/L. In addition, the State also proposed to impose effluent limits for chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), and acute toxicity.
The proposed limits were as follows:
BOD5 - 26 mg/L
COD - 240 mg/L
TOC - 57 mg/L
Acute toxicity - nontoxic: 48 hour Mysidopsis bahia (mysid shrimp) test
The pilot tests conducted during the study included several variations of chemical and biological wastewater treatment processes. While biological treatment alone was capable of meeting the
proposed BOD5 limit of 26 mg/L, the study showed that the effluent of the biological process
contained a high concentration of refractory (nonbiodegradable) organics and could not consistently meet the proposed limits for COD and TOC when treating high-strength wastewater.
Moreover, the biologically treated effluent was acutely toxic to mysid shrimp. As a consequence,
additional tests were conducted with advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). AOPs were evaluated for use as independent treatment processes as well as polishing processes following biological treatment. Pilot tests by Harmsen on the use of advanced oxidation processes for polishing
treatment of tanker cleaning effluent found significant reductions in COD concentrations, and
also reduced toxicity.1 The AOP processes used for this study included combinations of ozone
(O,), ultraviolet radiation (UV), and hydrogen peroxide (H202).
50th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, 1995, Ann Arbor Press, Inc.. Chelsea, Michigan 48118.
Printed in U.S.A.
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