A simple, passive, construction! No controls, no instruments, no moving parts. Just making the laws of physics work for you. That's all, but it means everything in the separation of oil from water.
The Suparator® principle is a patented solution for the removal of floating substances, like oil, from water or other aqueous media. Initially developed for oil spill recovery applications, the principle has shown to be incomparably effective in any oil/water separation application.
Different from any other oil separation technology, Suparator® actively collects, concentrates and actually removes oil from the process. This 3-step mechanism, collect - concentrate - separate, offers significant advantages.
The key to the Suparator® technology is the patented principle. Unique about this principle is the three-step separation mechanism; collect -- concentrate -- separate. This enables separating even the smallest traces of oil, without a drop of water, in the shortest possible time. All with a simple, passive construction.
The sketch shows a channel in cross-sectional view. The aqueous medium (blue), with oil (red), flows through this channel from left to right. A number of plates are mounted across the channel, such that the major part of the flow passes underneath (under flow) and a smaller portion passes overhead (upper flow).
The photo to the right shows an 86 unit in use, viewed from effluent side.
This picture very clearly shows while there is no visible oil in the front of the Suparator® unit, the oil starts showing up more and more as the medium passes through the patented Suparator® construction.
Oil, grease, solids, chemicals, and what other substances found in the process, interact to form floating substances that are far from the nice, fluid, substance we think of when we say oil. A common way to deal with this is to regularly clean the installation: not just the oil separator but the washer, the cleaning bath, the pit or what ever. For Suparator® there is a more intelligent way to deal with this!
To help remove the non-oil substances, and to minimize operational and maintenance cost, a number of extensions have been developed for Suparator®. These include:
Flush headers are used to wash away the material that would otherwise accumulate and cause a Suparator® unit to need cleaning. Typically flushing is done during normal operation, using small amounts of fresh water. Flush headers, mounted in crucial areas in a system "stir up" any accumulated material and cause it to be carried off with the flow. Flushing can easily be automated, practically eliminating the need for cleaning the unit.
Some floating matter tends to build up and will not go over the oil weir. As a result it builds up in time and inhibits liquid oil from being separated as well. Manually removing the accumulated material at given times is a solution, but may not be very practical. A rake skimmer is the intelligent way to address the problem.
The rake skimmer sweeps the surface in such a way that material that otherwise would accumulate, and which would not go over the valve tops or the oil weir, is pushed towards and over the oil weir. A single rake, moving slowly and wiping the surface at the Suparator® construction does all the work.