Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5 DECEMBER 1997
FACILITIES ENGINEERING
Utilities
4. Discussion.
a. The military is one of the largest purchasers of oil/water
separators in the United States. An analysis of Environmental
Programs Review Reports (A106) for the years 1995 and 1996
indicate that, not only is the Army spending large amounts of
money on separators, but the amount is increasing each year. The
U.S. Army currently owns and operates thousands of oil/water
separators. A typical installation may have more than 150.
or
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APPENDIX A
Oil/Water Separator Selection, Installation,
and Maintenance: Lessons Learned
1. Background
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These separators were below grade with access only through a small
manhole, the lid of which was secured by approximately 30 bolts.
According to installation personnel, in the three years since the
separators had been installed, the covers had not been removed.
Obviously, these separators are not being inspected. Note that
human entry into the separator may require a Confined space
permit. If so, the logistics of coordination with the Safety
Office and the Fire Department must be considered when defining
the costs and scheduling of inspection and maintenance activities.
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a. Purchasers of oil/water
separators are often ignorant of the
device's capabilities and constraints.
They do not know which types of
separators will provide the desired
results for a particular application and
rely on manufacturer's literature or sales representatives for
unit evaluation. However, vendor literature normally does not
address important characteristics such as highly variable flow
rates and variations in suspended solids and oil concentrations.
Rather, performance is advertised according to ideal conditions of
consistent flow and oil concentrations, and no other contaminants
present. There are no industry standards that manufacturer's must
meet. This has resulted in a large number of prefabricated
separators hitting the market. Many of these manufacturer's are
making unsubstantiated claims about their product's performance
capabilities. Often times, performance tests are performed under
unreasonable conditions.
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will be closed and the separators will be removed. The six that
remain will be replaced with new separators that the installation
designed. These will discharge to the CVWF.
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7. Summary.
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