It is estimated that each day the petroleum industry produces more than 1.4 million barrels of crude-oil sludge worldwide. Environmental concerns underscore the exigency of sludge remediation while the high price of oil drives an economic need to recover as much useable oil as possible from oil operations. This project will develop and field test a new microwave device that is capable of separating crude-oil sludges into water, solids, and high-quality oil. The device would be compact, easily transported to the sludge site, and capable of high throughput. Experiments have shown that microwaves enhance the separation of crude-oil sludges in comparison to separation techniques which utilize conventional heating alone. The Phase I project will examine the feasibility of the proposed microwave device by fabricating and testing an experimental prototype. Experiments will determine how effectively microwaves are coupled into the crude-oil sludges contained within the device and how complete is the separation of sludge components.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee:Global revenues from oil recovered from sludges could be as high as $4 billion annually. Remediation of crude-oil sludges would also have major environmental benefits by creating a cleaner and healthier environment.
