Characterization study of oil sludge solid sediment

The storage of oil sludge at refineries is a major problem to the petroleum industry. Oil sludge treatments such as by using sludge farming, incineration, physical and chemical techniques have been applied to separate the hydrocarbon from the solid sediment. The paper relates a characteristic study performed on solid sediment from a local oil sludge sample for making sintered bricks. The study includes the used of XRD, XRF, digital microscopy and particle size analyzer. The result shows that the sample highly contains quartz minerals with particle size ranging from 0.5 - 200 μm. The chemical phosphorus from the surfactant can be removed by washing to make this solid sediment to be used as a material in the brick making. (Author)