Is it possible to remove the contaminated oil from ground water used for agriculture and drinking ? People living in Jaffna are facing a grave threat in accessing clean drinking water due to groundwater pollution caused by oil leakage. In recent days, oil waste is clearly observed in drinking-water sources (wells etc) in Chunnagam and Valigamam areas. Wells are the prime and mostly the sole source of water in Jaffna and this contamination is severely affecting the livelihood in those areas. This issue has resulted in scarcity for clean drinking water for the people living in the areas. No satisfactory action has been taken yet by authorities. Hence, there is an imminent need to create awareness of the issue to a wider audience in order to accelerate the phase at which actions are taken to solve the issue. Can any body give a sustainable solution fore this burning issue in Northern Sri Lanka?
Sivakumar, When you state "contaminated oil", that typically means oil that has been discarded after use. This could mean that the oil has elevated heavy metals which can contaminant oil from part wear. I would be very careful about considering this for drinking water even if the organic fraction could be removed to acceptable levels.
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The first step is to locate and remove the source(s) of the oil contamination. Until you stop additional contamination from entering the groundwater your clean-up efforts will be fighting a losing battle.
The best in-situ treatment for petroleum products is biological - naturally-occurring soil microbes will break down the organic molecules as long as they have sufficient oxygen to do their job. This will require adding dissolved air to the groundwater eventually because the microbes will use up available oxygen over time. Ferric iron can also be used to feed the microbes, but generally dissolved oxygen will move through the aquifer more readily. Installing airlines with compressors in as many wells as possible is the way to do this. This method can also be used to treat extracted groundwater using treatment vessels that accomplish the same thing - I'm not a vendor but there are many versions of this available. This would be used for drinking water only because large volume treatment would be cost prohibitive in most cases. There may also be a need for additional treatment for potable water.
i would not recommend to use this water contaminated with oil to produce potable water. It will be contaminated with a sort of soluble oils that can be dangerous to the health.
Some comments refer to simple oil water separation but this will not take care of the fraction of the oil which formed an emulsion and is sort of dissolved in the water. Another thing to consider is that oil contamination caused by humans is usually a mixture of different hydrocarbon chain lenghts and aromatics. Even after oil water separation you will encounter these substances in the water phase. Therefore its not suitable as drinking water or even irrigation water.
I would recommend a physcio-chemical pretreatment followed by biological treatment of the water. This will take care of the majority of the hydrocarbons in both free phase as "dissolved" phase. To upgrade this water to irrigation water I suppose an Ultra Filtration step will be sufficient. Drinking water quality would require reversed osmosis.
For treating the groundwater prior to well extraction you could consider in situ remediation technologies. We offer a system which is able to promote biodegradation of oil in groundwater. It could be installed around these wells at a certain distance to create a treatment zone in the aquifer. This would save you expensive above ground equipment.
Although I am not an expert on Water purification, common sense tells me that oil does not mix with water. Taking this cue, one can adopt two methods for oil removal - through selective filtration which removes oil and then followed by routine treatment for reuse; secondly, there are specific bacteria which thrive on oil and they suck the oil out for the remaining water to be routinely treated.
oil removing from ground water is the part of pre treatment process.there is two popular process are oil removal. first is chemical treat ment and another is ACF treatment system.
The latest technology is ferrites.....see this link https://prezi.com/a_-a5pblktie/removal-of-oil-spill-on-seawater-using-magnetic-ferrite-nanoparticle-coated-by-polymer/