Marpol regulations regarding discharge of oil in 

sea water are becoming stringent day

by day. For this purpose Oily water seperators have become compulsory on all types of
ships. OWS is used to treat the oil-water mixture from bilge spaces (read about bilge
water here), oil tanks or any compartment in the ship which has accumulated water,
before discharging it to the sea. According to one of the annexure of Marpol, water that
has to be discharged should contain less than 15 parts per million of oil. OWS is used to
attain this.

Almost all OWS use gravity system for the separation of water from oil. This method
allows the system to bring down the PPM (parts per million) number to 100, which is not
enough. For this purpose, all OWS are equipped with a filtration system to bring down
the PPM level. The PPM is measured with an instrument which is similar in working to
the Salinometer used to check salt ppm.

In this article we will learn about the working of such an oily water separator which has
two units- A separator unit and a filtrating unit.

Construction and working- The separator unit

The Separator unit itself consists of two parts. The first part consists of a coarse
separating compartment with an inlet for the oil-water mixture. The oily water mixture
enters the compartment through the inlet pipe.Some of the oil molecules due to their
lower density will separate and rise to the top of the mixture into an oil collecting
compartment.

The remaining oil leaves the compartment, from an outlet provided at the bottom of the
chamber to the second part which is a fine separating compartment. This compartment
has stationary catch plates arrangement fixed at the center of the compartment as
shown in the figure. The oil mixture flows slowly between the catch plates. The oil from
the mixture will stick to the underside of the catch plates and slowly move outwards to
rise at the top of the mixture and gets collected in an oil collecting space.

The clean water which has PPM of around 100, flushes out of the compartment through
a pipe attached at the center of the compartment. All the oil collecting compartments are
provided with heating coils or a steam inlets for heating the oil to facilitate a free flow.
The air produced is released through a vent provided at the top of the compartment.
The mixture is then passed to the filteration unit.
Construction and working - The filtrating unit
The water that comes out of the separating unit generally has a PPM level of 100 or
less. To reduce the PPM level, it is passed to the filtrating unit. The filtrating unit also
consists of two stages.

When the water enters the first stage, solid particles and physical impurities are
removed with the help of filter units. These impurities settle at the bottom of the
compartment and are removed later. The water then passes through the second stage
for complete removal of oil. The second stage uses coalescer inserts to achieve this.
Coaslescer induces coalescence process between the oil particles. Due to this process
the surface tension between the oil molecules in the mixture breaks down which makes
them to stick together to form larger molecules. This large oil molecules then rise to the
top of the mixture to get collected in the collecting chamber.

The collecting chamber is emptied as and when require. The filter units are to be
changed generally once a week. The OSW system is fixed with a PPM monitoring
device which keeps a continuous check on the discharged water's PPM level. The
system raises an alarm, in case the PPM level goes above 15.

According to Marpol, this PPM monitoring device is also compulsory on ship along with
the OWS.

References
Introduction to Marine Engineering by D.A Taylor
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