In mid March of 2019, the Quantared team visited the premises of OMV at Gänserndorf to test the advances of their liquid-liquid extraction unit, as well as the interplay with the sample conditioning unit developed by OMV.

Initially, several different locations for the trial run were scanned with various degrees of oil contents, and ultimately a process stream chosen with concentrations within the AQUARIUS specifications.

The sample conditioning unit was attached to the process stream and successfully withdrew a constant flow of the sample stream to be fed into the extraction unit.

The extraction unit could handle the conditions of the sample stream and extracted the oil from the water prior to separating it using a membrane. Several measurements were carried out throughout the day and compared to offline data.

Overall, the excursion was a success! Insight with regards to the real world process streams, particularly with respect to particulate contamination and probe withdrawal, could be gained and will be used to adapt our extraction system to better cope with such conditions.

Engineers from QuantaRed Technologies setting up the extraction unit