DEVELOPMENT OF A TREATMENT DESIGN FOR
OILY WASTEWATER FROM TANKERS
Alexander B. Sadler, Jr., Partner
Austin Brockenbrough and Associates
Richmond, Virginia 23219
John S. Pierce, Jr., Vice President
Aqua-Air Laboratories, Inc.
Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
Clinton E. Parker, Associate Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22901
INTRODUCTION
The U.S. Navy Craney Island Fuel Depot located in the Norfolk, Virginia area is
located on the west bank of the Elizabeth River where it joins the James River to form
Hampton Roads.   This facility is the only one in the Norfolk area with an oil reclamation
capability.   It receives oily waters associated with ships and oil tankers as well as oily
waters from many of the naval facilities in the Norfolk area.   Ballast water, waste oils and
bilge waters are received by direct discharge from ships being fueled, by barges from
other naval activities and by truck.   Barges also pick up oily wastewater that has been
discharged into coastal "donuts" by ships and delivers this water to the fuel depot.
(Donuts refer to the use of holding facilities located in the bay with vertical walls or
shirts that are used by vessels to discharge oily wastewater.)  Through three piers it disperses aviation gasoline, jet fuel, marine diesel fuel and other petroleum products required
for fleet operations.
At the time of this design development oily wastewaters delivered to the depot went
to holding tanks where oil was skimmed off for reprocessing and the wastewater was
eventually discharged through small API separators.   Essentially wastewater from the
depot was without treatment since the existing API separators were in a poor state of
repair and provided insignificant treatment.   The 1977 discharge limitation for this
facility was set at 10 mg/1 total oil and 30 mg/1 of suspended solids.   In order to meet
these effluent requirements it was necessary to make a thorough evaluation of the waste
characteristics and develop a process design that would assure adequate treatment for the
various wastewater deliveries.   Since the wastewater would be from unidentifiable sources
and almost any substance imaginable could be present and other substances may have to
be removed in the future, the objective of the work reported here was to develop a
process design capable of handling a highly variable oily wastewater and treating this
wastewater so as to meet the 1977 oil and suspended solids limitations.
A laboratory study was made to characterize the wastewater to be expected and to
evaluate various process concepts.   Since there were three identifiable points or sources
that could be sampled it was necessary to characterize each.   These consisted of:   (a) deliveries from barges; (b) deliveries from tankers; and (c) holding or storage tanks at the
depot.
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