Background. Emergency losses from transporting oil and oil products by water tankers caused by man-made disasters reach 30 tons per 1 million tons of transported oil. One of the important tasks when implementing a set of measures to eliminate the consequences of emergency situations caused by oil spills is their collection (including cleaning the coastal zone) and disposal. Incineration in boiler units is a promising method of disposal.
Materials and methods. The study of the possibility of separating fuel oil from a sand and gravel mixture, as well as the preparation and combustion of water-fuel oil emulsion (WFOE) has been conducted on a pilot industrial facility at the Center for Innovative Coal Technologies (CICT) of the Siberian State Industrial University and Scientific and Production Center “Sibecotechnika”. The fuel oil-sand and gravel mixture used as material under examination was collected at a temporary storage site as part of the cleanup of the fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait on December 15, 2024.
Results. The authors have developed technological schemes to clean sand-gravel mixture from fuel oil, prepare WFOE and a boiler unit for its combustion. During the research it was established that for effective separation of fuel oil from sand and gravel mass it is necessary to actively mix fuel oil-sand and gravel mass with water in the ratio of 1:1,5 by weight at the temperature of not less than 50 °С. As a reagent the authors have used calcined soda (Na2CO3) in the amount of 1 % of the aqueous phase. The reagent solution is prepared in the reagent preparation unit, and the obtained water-fuel oil-sand and gravel mixture is separated in the gravity separator. To obtain a stable water-fuel oil emulsion it is necessary to have the ratio fuel oil : water = 40:60 (by weight), at the temperature of not less than 50 °С. As the equipment it is recommended to use a twin-screw mixer and a cavitator pump. A series of experiments on the combustion of a prepared pilot batch of WFOE on a pilot industrial installation have confirmed the high technical, economic and environmental performance of the developed technology.
Conclusions. A promising direction for the utilization of fuel oil-sand-gravel mass collected during the cleaning of the coastal zone from oil spill products as a result of the tanker accident in December 2024 in the Kerch Strait is its use as fuel for boiler units. As a result of a series of experiments on WFOE combustion on a bench pilot plant, the practical feasibility of using this technology has been confirmed, and a technical, economic and environmental assessment of its prospects has been carried out.