Abstract

Designing the conventional oil-water separator with the City of Tacoma design approach and the Modified design method approach all satisfied the API design criterion. The City of Tacoma design approach is a standard method and procedure for designing conventional oil-water separators with respect to API criteria. In most design approaches relating to oil-water separators, pressure was invariably not an inclusive criterion, hence the need to incorporate pressure into the design approach named modified design method became an important part of this work. Five physical models were built of varying sizes in terms of length, width and height. It was interesting to note that, the model with the longest hydraulic retention time shows a better separation efficiency. However, the comparative analysis of the two methods shows some similarity considering the various parameters calculated. The results shows that, there was a significant improvement in the design length of the separator using the modified design method as compared to the city of Tacoma design manual. Knowing the initial pressure of the vessel prior to hydro-testing through the modified design approach enhances the proper working of the vessel and also reduces loss time as a result of leak-off test.