Free oil sitting on top of wastewater will foul every treatment stage downstream if it is not caught first. Our oil water separator pulls it out before it ever reaches your biological or chemical treatment system, protecting the rest of your plant from a problem that is far easier to prevent than to fix later.
Not all oil in wastewater behaves the same way. Free oil, droplets above roughly 20 microns, separates naturally given time and the right conditions. Emulsified oil, droplets under 10 microns, gets chemically bound into the water phase by detergents, degreasers and high-shear pumping, and will not separate through gravity alone. An oil water separator manufacturer that does not understand this distinction ends up selling equipment that handles the easy half of the problem and leaves the harder half untouched. Our coalescing plate design targets free and dispersed oil directly, using inclined plates that shorten the distance an oil droplet has to travel before it merges with others and rises to the surface, faster and in a smaller footprint than a plain gravity tank could manage.
Whether you are running a single workshop bay or a full industrial wash-down facility, the right configuration depends on your flow rate and whether your oil is free-floating or emulsified.
Find the Right Configuration for Your Facility
A skid-mounted unit for smaller flow volumes, well suited to individual automotive workshops, service bays and small maintenance facilities where space is at a premium.
A larger-capacity system for engineering, metalworking and manufacturing facilities, often paired with a secondary polishing stage to handle higher oil loads from cutting fluids and coolants.
Where detergents or high-shear washing create stable oil-in-water emulsions that plate separation alone cannot resolve, this configuration adds dissolved air flotation with coagulation and flocculation to break the emulsion and capture the remaining oil.
Raw oil-laden wastewater enters and flow is slowed, allowing turbulence to settle before the water moves into the separation stage.
Water passes through a pack of inclined plates, where small oil droplets collide and merge into larger, more buoyant droplets that rise to the surface faster than they would in an open tank.
Separated oil is skimmed from the surface, while settled solids collect at the bottom and get removed through routine servicing.
For emulsified oil that plate separation cannot fully resolve, dissolved air flotation or media-based polishing handles what remains before final discharge.
Treated water exits with oil content brought within discharge limits, or routed into your broader effluent treatment plant for further processing.
This system is built for automotive workshops and service centers, engineering and metalworking facilities dealing with cutting fluids and tramp oils, and paint shops generating oil-laden wash water. It also applies as a pre-treatment stage within a larger effluent treatment plant wherever oil and grease would otherwise interfere with biological or chemical treatment downstream. If your facility uses detergents or high-shear cleaning that creates stable emulsions rather than free-floating oil, a coalescing separator alone will not fully resolve your effluent, and we typically recommend pairing it with a dissolved air flotation stage.
Flow rate is the primary cost driver, a single workshop bay needs a fraction of the capacity a full industrial wash-down facility requires. Whether your oil is free-floating or emulsified matters just as much, a straightforward coalescing plate unit costs considerably less than a system that also needs dissolved air flotation to break stable emulsions. Construction material shifts cost too, polyethylene units are more economical than stainless steel, though material choice should follow what your effluent actually contains rather than upfront price alone. We size cost around your actual flow rate and oil characteristics after reviewing your operation, not a generic per-liter rate.
Free oil consists of droplets above roughly 20 microns that separate naturally given the right conditions, this is what coalescing plate separators are built to handle. Emulsified oil, droplets under 10 microns, gets chemically bound into the water by detergents and high-shear washing, and needs additional treatment like dissolved air flotation to break apart.
Gravity-based separators typically need sludge and oil removal on a weekly to monthly basis, while coalescing plate units generally need cleaning every few months depending on influent oil load and flow rate. We recommend a servicing schedule based on your specific operation during installation.
Detergent-heavy wash water often creates emulsified oil that a standard coalescing separator cannot fully resolve on its own. If your operation uses significant detergent or degreaser volume, we typically recommend pairing the separator with a dissolved air flotation stage.
This depends on what else is in your effluent. If oil and grease are your only significant pollutant, a standalone oil water separator may be sufficient. If your wastewater also carries organic load, chemicals or other contaminants, this typically functions as a pre-treatment stage ahead of a full effluent treatment plant.
Skimmed oil is collected separately and requires disposal per your local waste handling regulations, we can advise on compliant disposal routes based on your facility's specific waste classification.
Share your raw water laboratory reports and discharge limits with our senior engineering team.