Abstract
The marine environment is constantly at risk of pollution by hydrocarbon spills that requires its cleanup to protect the environment and human health. Posidonia oceanica (L.) (PO) beach balls, which are characteristic of the Mediterranean Sea and abundant on the beaches, are used as biosorbent to remove hydrocarbons from the sea. The impact of several factors such as oil concentration, time sorption, and weight sorbent was investigated to determine the oil and water sorption capacity for raw and milled P. oceanica fibers. The study of kinetic models for initial crude oil concentration of 2.5, 5, 8.8, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 g/L revealed that crude uptake followed the pseudo-first-order model while, for isotherm models, the crude uptake onto the P. oceanica tended to fit the Langmuir model. Experiments were performed according to two systems: a pure oil and pure water system and a mixed oil/water system. For the dry system (pure oil and pure water), the maximum oil and water sorption capacity of raw and milled fibers was found to be 5.5 g/g and 14 g/g for oil and 14.95 g/g and 15.84 g/g for water, respectively, whereas, in the mixed oil/water system, the maximum oil and water sorption capacity was estimated as 4.74 g/g, 12.80 g/g and 7.41 g/g, 8.31 g/g, respectively. The results showed that, in spite of their absorbency of a lot of water, the milled fibers with grain size ranging between 0.5 mm and 1 mm might be the relevant sorbent for the elimination of crude oil from seawater thanks to its efficient sorption capacity and low cost.
Highlights
Oil remains one of the main resources of energy in the modern industrial sector as well as an important source of raw materials for synthetic polymers and chemicals worldwide [1]. e environment, has borne the brunt of oil exploration and transportation for several decades resulting in oil spills responsible for contamination of coastal waters and land
Batch Experiments for Sorption Capacity. e sorption experiments were conducted in batch for two different systems: dry system and oil/water layer for which sorption kinetics/equilibrium and the effect of milling/particle size were investigated. e oil was a crude obtained from a local oilfield and used as received. e water used was seawater brought from the same area as the PO balls
E biochemical composition shows that total carbohydrates constitute the major components at 79.7% and the contents of ash and moisture are 7.3% and 10.9%, respectively. e elemental analysis reveals that sea grass fibers are rich in cations. e results have shown that calcium (97.3 mg/g), magnesium (42.3 mg/g), sodium (38.7 mg/g), iron (33.3 mg/g), and potassium (10.7 mg/g) are the main cations in PO, as determined by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS)
Summary
Oil remains one of the main resources of energy in the modern industrial sector as well as an important source of raw materials for synthetic polymers and chemicals worldwide [1]. e environment, has borne the brunt of oil exploration and transportation for several decades resulting in oil spills responsible for contamination of coastal waters and land. E environment, has borne the brunt of oil exploration and transportation for several decades resulting in oil spills responsible for contamination of coastal waters and land. Any spill-treatment method depends largely on these processes [2]. Us, sorption is the most favored procedure for cleaning oil-spill because of its low cost. E main limitations of the mechanical and chemical treatment methods are their inefficient trace level adsorption and their high costs [2]. It is highly efficient and more environmentally friendly.
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