All crude oil carries a little of water, sand, and mineral sediment molecules tightly bounded with hydrocarbons. The result is the gradual precipitation of these heavier elements into thick, granular petroleum by products known as crude oil sludge. The oily sludges in ship tanks and in storage facilities have to be treated efficiently in order to keep the security and the capacity of storage facilities, to protect a serious environmental pollution, and to retrieve lost resource. The oily sludge treatment system should be designed to satisfy requirements mentioned in safe work condition. As a basic study, in this paper, an oily sludge treatment system by ultrasonic waves was proposed. Then, the features of ultrasonic energy and recovery of sludge with ultrasonic waves are investigated by experiments. As results, we found that ultrasonic waves are a new energy to flow oil sludge environment-friendly in safe work condition. In addition, it was shown that ultrasonic energy is more efficient than thermal energy in treating oil sludge, and that the volume of wastes for disposal is reduced remarkably.

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