Advancements in oil recovery and waste treatment at Shaybah utilizing hydraulic shock and cavitation technology.
This paper reports a single-site, pilot-scale field deployment of an integrated hydraulic shock, hydrodynamic cavitation, and attrition treatment system for hydrocarbon-contaminated sludge and sand at Saudi Aramco's Shaybah Gas Oil Separation Plant (GOSP). The study design was a continuous-flow field trial conducted over a period of 4 weeks against a documented pre-existing disposal baseline (800 km transport to off-site landfill with no resource recovery). There was no concurrent experimental control arm, as the full waste volume generated during a turnaround and inspection (T&I) event was processed through the pilot system. A total feed volume of 1300 m3 of oily sludge, sand, and associated water was processed at a peak throughput of 10 m3/h. Total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) concentration in the sand fraction was determined by EPA Method 8015D; basic sediment and water (BS&W) content of recovered oil was determined by ASTM D4007; total suspended solids (TSS) in recovered water was determined by Standard Methods 2540D. The treatment reduced TPH in the sand fraction from a mean of 90,000 mg/kg (range 20,100-150,000 mg/kg; n = 3) in the oily sludge feed to a mean of 5700 mg/kg (range 2010-8000 mg/kg; n = 3) in the treated solid, representing a 94% mean reduction. The system recovered 2820 barrels (448.3 m3) of oil at a mean BS&W of 0.1% (range 0.07-0.15%; n = 3) and 920 m3 of water at a mean TSS of 64 mg/L (range 40-75 mg/L; n = 3), both returned to the production process. Waste volume requiring landfill disposal was reduced by 97.5% (from 1300 m3 to 33 m3 of residual solids). The pilot avoided 155 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions associated with transportation relative to the pre-existing disposal baseline, net of emissions from the on-site diesel generator. These results indicate that integrated hydraulic shock and cavitation treatment can achieve TPH reduction, resource recovery, and waste diversion performance at field scale comparable to or exceeding values reported for laboratory-scale cavitation systems, while processing an uncontrolled, heterogeneous real-world feedstock.