What is a separator used for?
It is used to clean the fuel or lube oils for a ship. Fuel for a ship is called fuel oil. The quality of fuel or lube oil is often not very good for various reasons. The full name of a separator is a mineral oil separator. Not to be confused with an oily water separator (see next question). When fuel oil is delivered to a ship, it first goes into a settling tank. That’s where the first separation actually starts, i.e. due to gravity heavy particles sink to the bottom of the settling tank. The oil is then pumped into the separator where it is purified. It then goes into a day tank and from there to the main engine. See figure 1.
