McTighe Industries has been active in the oil-water separation business for over 20 years. We offer a complete line of oil-water separators for the separation of multi-phase liquids and solids from industrial wastewater. Our Design team utilizes our past experience and current research to constantly stay on top of the oil-water separator industry and maintain compliance with Environmental Protection Agency wastewater discharge regulations. McTighe oil-water separators have a proven track record over the years to be high performance and low maintenance.

The purpose of this material is to present the design, performance, operation, and maintenance characteristics of the McTighe oil-water separator to engineering personnel, federal, state, and local environmental protection authorities, and other personel concerned with wastewater handling, treatment, liquid storage and handling facilities. Gavitational type oil-water separator have provided the basis for treating wastwater from airports, utilities, industrial firms, transportation facilities, vehicle maintenance and washing facilities and petroleum marketing facilities. The following information provides a brief overview on the separation principles of the McTighe cylindrical and rectangular oil-water separator.

The McTighe oil-water separator design utilizes some of the design criteria found in Chapters 3 & 5 of the American Petroleum Institute Manuel on Disposal of Refinery Wastes (Volume on Liquid Wastes), and API Bulletin Number 1630 "Wastewater Handling and Treatment for Petroleum Marketing Facilities" -- First Edition May 1979. Both of these standards are out of print and are replaced by API 421 "Monographs of Refinery Environmental Control -- Management of Water Discharges" -- First Edition February 1990. The patented McTighe separator also incorporates research performed over the last 50 years.

Construction standards that apply to various separator arrangements include:

API design principles provide a good foundation to base a separator design on; however, API separators are typically open top, large concrete pools that are limited to effluent discharge rates of 50 ppm. The limiting factors of the API design were the impetus for McTighe to design and patent a smaller, self-contained, high performance separator. Our cylindrical separators have a small wetted surface area and a gasketed, removable, steel cover that results in less evaporation, less air pollution, and less chance for ignition of flammable vapors open top API designs.

Typical API designs are based upon the removal of free oils globules larger than 150 microns. Oil globules smaller than 150 microns may pass through an API separator since the oil droplets do not have enough buoyancy to migrate to the surface before entering the discharge pipe. If a separator is needed to remove 20 micron oil droplets, the required surface area in a standard API unit would be prohibitively large If the surface area can be subdivided and stacked in layers, the resulting separator size can be greatly reduced.

Thus, the patented McTighe Industries oil-water separator incorporates an inclined arrangement of corrugated plates stacked upwards at a 45 degree angle and adequately spaced to prevent plugging from solids and debris. Our corrugated plate arrangement greatly reduces the distance an oil droplet has to rise for effective removal. Due to these characteristics, the McTighe Industries oil-water separator is about 1/5 the size of an API separator. McTighe's unique corrugated plate arrangement and spacing provide free oil effluent qualities of less than 15 ppm or less under normal operation conditions.*

McTighe leads the way with not only utilizing a high performance, low maintenance corrugated plate arrangement but also including a secondary olephilic (oil attracting) and hydrophobic (water repelling) coalescer. The McTighe Petro-Pak™ is an enhanced coalescer consisting of interlaced media encased in a 304 stainless steel frame. The Petro Pak™, when used in conjunction with the McTighe oil-water separator, coalesces oil globules down to 20 microns in size and reduces the effluent oil content level to 10 ppm or less under normal operating conditions*. See Petro Pak™ description sheet for more information.

This catalog will provide more details on the operating principles and advantages of our oil-water separator and will show different arrangements, options, and accessories available with our design. Feel free to contact our engineering staff to discuss any application you may have.

* Normal Operating Conditions

The catalog flow ratings are based upon influents containing oils of 0.90 or lighter specific gravity, up to 20% (200,000 ppm) oil content in the water and temperatures of 40 degrees F to 140 degrees F. Contact McTighe Industries on applications where influent requirements exceed the stated limits.