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Principal Investigator 

The oil industry worldwide produces millions of tons of hazardous oil sludge daily. Additionally, millions of barrels of this oil sludge are stored in temporary storage tanks, pits, and ponds without any economic justification. Oil sludge is generated at all crude oil storage sites, including storage tanks, transfer stations, oil tankers, and refineries, leading to numerous problems. In Iran, as one of the largest producers and exporters of crude oil in the world, a substantial quantity of oil sludge is produced annually across the entire oil industry, including refineries, petrochemicals, extraction centers, transportation, and terminals. In the country's refineries, of the approximately 40 million barrels of crude oil storage capacity, around 2.5 to 3 million barrels have become unusable due to the formation of this type of sludge.

Therefore, various methods should be employed to treat or recycle this hazardous pollutant. However, the extreme stability of oil sludge has made its treatment very challenging. Conventional and traditional methods used to eliminate these sludges include landfilling. Since oil sludge contains compounds such as heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy oil compounds, which are highly toxic to both the environment and living organisms, leading to carcinogenic, mutagenic, neurotoxic, and reproductive effects, these compounds can infiltrate various layers and contaminate groundwater, causing irreversible damage. Furthermore, the increasing competition for land needed for sludge disposal (with over 300 million cubic meters of contaminated soil entering the environment each year) and inflexible environmental standards have made traditional oil sludge disposal methods unsuitable for addressing this environmental dilemma.

Given the importance of oil sludge in the country and the lack of practical studies on this subject, we aimed to propose a new solution for the management, recycling, and safe disposal of oil sludge. The design and construction of the co-pyrolysis system represent a new, cost-effective, and beneficial approach to environmental protection. In fact, the current system is an advanced generation of pyrolysis systems that possesses the following major advantages: The co-pyrolysis process was chosen using a semi-continuous rotary reactor to ensure that pyrolysis occurs (that is, in addition to separating light hydrocarbons from oil sludge, various heavy hydrocarbons are thermocracked and converted into light hydrocarbons). The rotary and semi-continuous nature of the system allows it to operate continuously for 24 hours without shutdowns, thereby increasing efficiency, capacity, and productivity, while saving time, costs, and energy. Additionally, the system is isolated, resulting in no environmental pollution. It uses natural fuel, and the non-compressible gas produced as a byproduct serves as auxiliary fuel. This system does not require cooling and preparation for the previous stage for each processing cycle. In comparison to batch-type systems, the current system not only offers higher capacity and cost-effectiveness but also provides better process efficiency and product quality.

The necessity of implementing 

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