By Devendra Singh Fonia, Chief Marketing Ofcer,BPC India
Retrotting Oil-Water Skimmers for Reliable Primary Treatment in Reneries
The Challenge: Oil Shock Loads and Manual Skimmer Control In several leading Indian refineries, TPI/CPI separators are designed to isolate free-phase oil from primary effluent. However, due to manual skimmer operation, these systems often underperform when handling real-world variations, especially:
- Unpredictable oil load
- Ineffective skimming during high oil load periods
- Overflow of free oil to downstream DAFs, and biological units.
- Frequent human intervention, exposure to VOCs and missed actuation windows.
This manual dependency made it difficult to maintain less than 50 ppm oil in effluent at the outlet of TPI and increases risk of downstream process disruption.
BPC’s Automation: Modular Retrofit for Oil Skimmer Control
BPC developed a non-invasive retrofit solution to fuly automate oil skimmer operation in TPI units. The solution includes:
- Oil Level Sensors: To detect oil level presence and trigger skimmer logic.
- Automated Skimmer Motors: That activate based on sensor thresholds or pre-set schedules.
- Automated Control: Providing operations of th Automated Skimmer according to Oil Level sensors.
This solution was designed for plug-and-play deployment, with minimal structural changes, without any requirement of a hot job on the TPI and functions independently through it’s own PLC control system.
Results Across Refineries: MRPL, IOCL, BPCL
MRPL – Mangalore Refinery
- Reduced TPI outlet oil from 60 ppm (with manual operations) to less than 25 ppm (with BPC’s Automation).
- Successfully managed shock loads up to 10,000 ppm oil.
- Automated skimmers recovered 200 m3 during oil shock loads.
- Manual interventions virtually eliminated.
IOCL – Mathura Refinery
- Reduced TPI outlet oil from 250 ppm (with manual operations) to less than 80 ppm (with BPC’s Automation)
- Improved protection of downstream DAF and secondary units, lower chemical consumption and lower sludge generation.
- Reduced downtime and improved predictability of primary treatment.
BPCL – Mumbai Refinery
- Oil in Effluent Slippage to the Downstream DAF unit minimized to less than 30 ppm.
- Increased oil recovery efficiency from primary separators.
- Consistent compliance with internal discharge norms.
