Water Management in the Petroleum Refining Industry

Petroleum refining industry uses large volumes of water. The water demand is up to 3 m3 of water for every ton of petroleum processed (US EPA, 1980, 1982; WB, 1998). Almost 56% of this quantity is used in cooling systems, 16% in boiling systems, 19% in production processes and the rest in auxiliary operations. The water usage in the Mexican refineries is almost 155 millions m3 per year; it is 2.46 m3 of water per ton of processed petroleum (PEMEX, 2007). The water supply and distribution for the different uses depend on the oil transformation processes in the refineries, which are based on the type of crude petroleum that each refinery processes and on the generated products. The cooling waters are generally recycled, but the losses by evaporation are high, up to 50% of the amount of the used water. The reduction of the losses and the increase of the cycles of recirculation represent an area of opportunities to diminish the water demand. The requirements with respect to the quality of the water used in the cooling systems are not very strict (Nalco, 1995; US EPA, 1980), which makes possible to use treated wastewater as alternative water source (Sastry & Sundaramoorthy, 1996; Levin & Asano, 2002). The water for the production processes and for services must be of high quality, equivalent to the one of the drinking water. For the boilers and some production processes, the water must be in addition demineralized (Powel, 1988; Nalco, 1995). The Mexican refineries have demineralizing plants which generally use filtration and ion exchange or reverse osmosis systems. The quantity of the wastewater generated in the refineries is almost 50% of the used fresh water (US EPA, 1982; WB, 1998; EC, 2000). Different collection systems are used in the refineries, depending on the effluent composition and the point of generation. The waters that are been in contact with petroleum and its derivatives contain oil, hydrocarbons, phenols, sulfides, ammonia and large quantities of inorganic salts (US EPA, 1995; Mukherjee et al., 2011). Following the implemented production processes, organic acids, dissolving substances and aromatic compounds may by also present in the wastewater. These effluents are conducted by means of an oily drainage towards the pre-treatment systems for the oil and oily solids separation. The optimization of the production processes, the appropriate control of the operation procedures and the implementation of appropriate water management practices have yield significant reductions of the wastewater flows and of the level of the contaminant loads. Consequently the quality of wastewater discharges can be improved reducing this way their environmental impact and the treatment costs (IPIECA,