Do they use industrial boiler systems? If so, what happens to the waste water after it is heated?
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There is no one answer to this question. It depends on the water needs for the process and the contaminates in the waste water. It might be used in a boiler or cooling water system. It might also be used as utility water for area wash down and clean up.
Oil field trash is correct – it depends on a lot of things.
Here’s my take – one big consideration for whether the wastewater can be recycled back into the plant is whether or not the wastewater is considered “hazardous waste” – at least in the US. You might aware that that hazardous waste is a subset of solid waste – and that “solid waste” can include aqueous wastes – the term “solid” has nothing at all to do with the phase of a substance – “solid wastes” can be solids, liquids, or even gases.
Now, non-hazardous wastewater, or efluent from hazardous wastewater treamtent that is not hazardous anymore, may be used for potentially any number of things – e.g., cooling water for various industrial processes, feed water, and I even heard of one company proposing to re-use their wastewater for fire control systems – in that last case, we were quite concerned as to whether or not the wastewater was hazardous or not. If they used hazardous wastewater for fire control – they could get in trouble for disposal of hazardous waste without a permit – big time fines.
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Anyway, anywhere water would be needed is a potential application, depending on the quality of water needed.
Wastewater from this industry and several others are called oily wastes. This could not be used “as is” in a boiler without fouling the inner workings of it and connected piping. Treatment of this wastewater could clean it to a usable state. Conventional physical/chemical treatment might work if large volumes were involved. However, filtration schemes could be utilized. Ultrafiltration (UF) or nanofiltration (NF) followed by reverse osmosis (RO) would produce water of a reusable quality. Lesser pretreatment might allow discharge to a municipal or other industrial treatment system.