Investigation the Adsorption of Heavy Oil from Solution by Low-Cost Material

Abstract

Over the last decades, there has been increasing global concern over the public health impacts attributed to environmental pollution. Natural materials that are available in large quantities or certain waste from agricultural operations may have the potential to be used as low cost adsorbent ,widely available and are environmentally friendly after using them. Thus, rice husk RH, a commonly available waste in Iraq. RH and activated rice husk ARH (pretreated by 13M H2SO4 with 0.5 NaOH and thermally treated at573k) have been studied as sorbents for heavy oil cleanup operations in the aqueous environment (water pumped from brooks to sedimentation unit). Batch adsorption experiments were performed as a function of pH (2-10) , adsorbent dose(0.25-1g ), initial concentration (1-20g/100ml water) , agitation time (15-75min) and different temperature(298-338K),with100rpm.The maximum removal took place in the pH range of 8, adsorbent dose 1g ,initial concentration 20g/100ml water , agitation time 45 min and temperature 338k . The sorption data obtained from studies at optimized conditions have been subject to Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm studies .The data fits well to both the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models indicating favorable and monolayer adsorption .X-ray diffraction analysis ,which indicates that the RH and ARH mainly consist of amorphous materials .The adsorbents were characterized using FTIR . It was found that the pretreatment of rice husk increase the specific surface area and changed the functional groups , therefore leads to increase the capacity of adsorption.