Abstract

The present study is predicting, by deducing empirical correlations, the effect of varying the operating and the environmental parameters on the performance of belt skimmer. The belt linear speed, belt inclination angle and oil film thickness are the operating parameters. The current speed and the wave height are the environmental parameters. The oil recovery rate, ORR and the oil recovery efficiency, ORE, the two most important parameters displayed the performance of the belt skimmer, are predicted by empirical correlations as function of these operating and environment parameters. Sets of published experimental data in the open literature were used to obtain these empirical correlations. Five different cases are studied. In each case two equations are deduced, one for ORR and the other for ORE. These cases covered the static and dynamic belt skimmer working conditions. The empirical correlations are obtained by using the least squares method (Regression analysis). Comparisons are performed between the results obtained, for ORR and ORE, using the deduced empirical correlations and the used experimental data. Finally, general empirical correlations, cover practical operating belt skimmer ranges, are obtained and show reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

Key words:  Empirical correlations, belt skimmer, performance.