Management of processed and non-processed wastes generated in Oil Refinery of Isfahan in order to reduce waste stream toward disposal sites

Abundant oil and gas resources and activities in Iran has led to generation of significant volume of industrial and hazardous wastes which need to be properly managed. The objective of this study is to examine the current situation of waste management in Isfahan Oil Refinery and provide practical approaches to reduce generated wastestream toward disposal sites.
For this purpose, we conducted a field study to identify the sources of production and the type and amount of waste produced at Oil Refinery of Isfahan.
Results demonstrated that 44.1% of the generated wastes are non-processed waste while 55.7% of the produced wastes are classified as processed waste. Only a small fraction of the identified waste in Oil Refinery of Isfahan is characterized as hazardous waste, i.e. 0.1%. The main types of the generated wastes are construction and demolition wastes, food wastes, metal scrap, cartridge and membrane, oil sludge of waste water treatment, biological waste water treatment sludge, oil sludge from the bottom of ponds and the spent catalyst.
In order to prevent squandering of natural resources and control waste generation in Oil refinery of Isfahan some practical approaches are proposed such as composting of food waste, purification and recycling of oil sludge and regeneration of the catalysts and reuse of the spent catalysts in other processes.