Abstract
Huge amounts of anthropogenic environmental pollutants appearing in nature mean an emerging problem. Oil shale is a convenient candidate, wherewith these contaminations can be removed from our natural environment, taking into account its sorption ability and low price. However, oil shale has a crumbling nature, which restricts its facile usage. Hence, oil shale was transformed into more handleable forms, using binding materials. Two oil shale composite forms were prepared by applying sodium alginate and agar. A cationic and an anionic chemicals, benzyltriethylammonium chloride and sodium 2,3-diisopropylnaphthalene-1-sulfonate, respectively, were used as model pollutants, and their sorptions on these newly prepared composites were studied. Sorption properties of oil shale powder and oil shale composites were compared. In the composite materials, oil shale properly sorbed the model pollutants (the binding material did not cover the sorption sites); furthermore, oil shale composites had significantly higher removal efficiency compared to that of the oil shale powder: 208 ± 15.6 (oil shale–agar) and 171 ± 22.8 (oil shale–alginate) vs 140 ± 11.1 µmol/g for the cationic compound; 151 ± 1.6 (oil shale–agar) and 165 ± 7.6 (oil shale–alginate) vs 81.5 ± 2.6 µmol/g for the anionic compound. Results of diffusion models for the two composites show that the opposite charges of the solutes largely influence the rate of their diffusion, owing to the interaction between the solute and the composite material. These results indicate that oil shale and its composites are applicable candidates as sorbents, from which the most effective one can be chosen by considering the chemical properties of the actual pollutant to be removed.
Highlights
Anthropogenic pollutants in nature have been a huge problem for a long time
When the homogeneous suspension of oil shale–agar was poured into cold dishes, the mixture was rapidly cooled; the oil shale particles could not move, largely because of the arising of fast gelling effect of agar
The Total organic carbon (TOC) results regarding the organic material released from oil shale to the supernatant show considerable differences between oil shale powder, oil shale–alginate and oil shale–agar composites
Summary
Anthropogenic pollutants in nature have been a huge problem for a long time. There were numerous attempts in the last several years to remove these chemicals owning various properties (Shawabkeh 2006; Ayar et al 2008; Zhao et al 2014; Acar et al 2015; Hassani et al 2015; İnal and Erduran 2015; Belhouchat et al 2017; Chen et al 2017; Dinu et al 2017; Phiri et al 2019; Duman et al 2020). The price of some of these sorbents is too high to apply regularly in the industry; new low-priced materials having convenient sorption properties tend to be used for purifying the contaminated waters or liquids. Among these materials, oil shale is one of the most promising natural material, which has been used as a sorbent in unmodified or modified forms (Shawabkeh 2006; Ayar et al 2008; Zhao et al 2014; Acar et al 2015). Oil shale has no universally accepted definition. The most widespread definition is “lamellar sedimentary rock, its ash content is higher than
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