Trend in Research on Characterization, Environmental Impacts and Treatment of Oily Sludge: A Systematic Review

Oily sludge is a hazardous material generated from the petroleum industry that has attracted increasing research interest. Although several review articles have dealt with specific subtopics focusing on the treatment of oily sludge based on selected references, no attempt has been made to demonstrate the research trend of oily sludge comprehensively and quantitatively. This study conducted a systematic review to analyze and evaluate all oily sludge-related journal articles retrieved from the Web of Science database. The results show that an increase in oily sludge-related research did not take place until recent years and the distribution of the researchers is geographically out of balance. Most oily sludge-related articles focused on treatment for harmfulness reduction or valorization with limited coverage of formation, characterization, and environmental impact assessment of oily sludge. Pyrolytic treatment has attracted increasing research attention in recent years. So far, the research findings have been largely based on laboratory-scale experiments with insufficient consideration of the cost-effectiveness of the proposed treatment methods. Although many methods have been proposed, few alone could satisfactorily achieve cost-effective treatment goals. To enable sustainable management of oily sludge on a global scale, efforts need to be made to fund more research projects, especially in the major oil-producing countries. Pilot-scale experiments using readily available and affordable materials should be encouraged for practical purposes. This will allow a sensible cost-benefit analysis of a proposed method/procedure for oily sludge treatment. To improve the treatment performance, combined methods are more desirable. To inform the smart selection of methods for the treatment of different oily sludge types, it is suggested to develop universally accepted evaluation systems for characterization and environmental risk of oily sludge.