Post your response to the blog discussing why refinery wastewater cannot be treated in municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Among the various supporting processes comes the treatment of wastewater. Refineries use a great amount of water in many different processes including desalting, distillation, cracking, and coking. As stated in Lesson 10, there are a few types of wastewater, including cooling water, process water and steam, storm water, and sanitary sewage water. Process water and steam is usually heavily polluted since it comes in direct contact with petroleum distillates. Several pollutants can be found in wastewater, such as aromatic compounds, heteroatoms like amines, phenols, and cyanides, and acids which all have the potential to harm humans or other wildlife.

It is very important that wastewater be treated prior to being sent off to a municipal wastewater treatment plant. Sour water is contaminated with solid particles that must be stripped of like sulfur in a stripping unit, and oils that must be separated by skimming the oil that floats on top of the denser water. A secondary treatment process utilizes microorganisms as biological contactors to help separate the pollutants from the wastewater. Much of this necessity stems from the implementation of the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the incorporation of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination permits (NPDE). There are multiple stages the wastewater must go through before it is suitable enough to be treated at public facilities.