Inland industrial oil spills can have detrimental effects on the river and stream environments and may contaminate the groundwater.  Nylon 6,6 nonwoven fabric bags and fences have been employed to separate spilled oil from contaminated water along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the southern United States.  This work describes the laboratory scale analysis of the effectiveness of these nylon filters to remove light crude oil from fresh and saltwater.  Small filters (38 mm in diameter) were tested at varying flow rates of water passing through the filter and varying concentrations of oil-in-water emulsions.  Samples were taken before and after the filter and analyzed by gas chromatography/flame ionization detection to determine the oil levels in the water. The filters were effective at removing the oil with concentrations of 70 and 140 ppm.  The filters trapped oil better at the lower flow rates.

Separation of oil contaminates from oil-in-water emulsions using nylon 6,6 nonwoven fabric filters

249th National Meeting (2015)

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