Adsorption of Crude Oil Using Meshed Groundnut Husk

Abstract

There is an increasing awareness of the impact of spilled crude oil and its refined products on human health and environment. The potential of using groundnut husk, agro-based waste, which is not only ubiquitous but indiscriminately littered around Nigerian urban areas, as an adsorbent in removal of oil spilled on water was investigated. Groundnut shell, a waste generated in local vegetable oil processing plants, has been converted into a low cost adsorbent. The groundnut husk was treated and meshed to adsorb crude oil from water at various experimental conditions. Investigations include the effects of sorbent dosage, particle size, contact time and temperature on the adsorption of crude oil. Meshed groundnut shell, especially less than 150 µm, exhibited high affinity for oil adsorption with time. The optimum adsorption temperature range lies between 25 – 45°C. The adsorption data indicates that a pseudo-second-order equation could be used to study the adsorption kinetics and the correlation coefficient of 0.9985 indicates that the sorption process is dominated by adsorption process. The results demonstrate that crude oil removal by adsorption onto this abundantly available low cost and readily biodegradable material is feasible. With high affinity for oil and low water pick up, meshed groundnut shell adsorbent could be said to be oleophilic or hydrophobic.