Oil and Water Separation Using a Glass Microfiber Coalescing Bed

A vertical sleeve separator using glass microfiber with a mean diameter of 4 µm as coalescence medium was explored to remove oil from the oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions. The artificial emulsions were prepared by mixing diesel oil and water to obtain oil droplets with a mean diameter about 7 µm. A series of experiments were performed to investigate the effect of such parameters as bed porosity (0.850–0.925), bed height (2.0–20.0 mm), flow velocity (1.0–20.0 mL/s), and influent oil concentration (200.0–3000.0 mg/L) on the effluent oil concentration and oil removal efficiency. The obtained effluent oil concentration was from 4.98 to 53.04 mg/L, and the oil removal efficiency was 96.4–99.8%. In addition, the article identifies the interaction between bed porosity and height, explains the mutual influences between the emulsion velocity and concentration, and quantitatively derives the appropriate ranges of bed characteristics and operating conditions.