The need to control the oil content in oily bilge water discharges to meet the increasing stringent seawater pollution standards has led to the development of gravity type separators. Among the several gravitational methods, a plate type oily water separator can be used as an assistant equipment for the oil filtering system to meet the present IMO standard of 15 ppm, because it is believed to be an efficient method dealing with a large amount of rich oil with high specific gravity. The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiency of oil/water separation with the characteristics of separating plate arrangement. An experimental study was carried out to analyse an efficient treatment oil-water mixture with variation of operating parameters, including flow rates, inlet oil concentrations and the height between the plates. The experimental results show that the height between the plates has a significant effect on the separation efficiency. The best efficiency was acquired when the ration of the height between the plates the plates to distance(H/Ci) was 2 with lower inlet oil concentration and lower flow rate.