Utilization of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (Hematite) as Adsorbent for Removal of Organic Pollutants in Refinery Wastewater

Abstract

The increasing of global energy demand leads to the huge amount of wastewaterassociated with refinery processes. Refinery wastewater (RWW) contains significant levels ofcontaminants and are characterized by enormous amounts of refinery effluent. Since the wastes ofrefinery processing is a reason to ecological contaminations, treatment is a vital step for eliminationof these pollutants. This study was designed to determine effect of pH, process time and nano hematitedose in order to eliminate the organics pollutants from the refinery wastewater using adsorptionprocess and MINITAB software. The nano hematite was characterized by Fourier transform infraredspectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The effect of adsorption time, nano adsorbentdose, and pH on the elimination of organic pollutants in the RWW was also investigated. The removalefficiency of organic content was 85.1% at pH 6.5, within time of 150 min, and adsorbent dose was0.9 g. The isotherms data of the adsorption process were determined by the Langmuir, Freundlich,and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) models. The latter demonstrated the highest adsorption kinetics,which ended up with a constant rate and higher adsorption capacity. These results indicated thatthe use of nano hematite was highly efficient in the removal of RWW organic pollutants withhigh adsorption capacity as determined by BET model