Application of magnetic nanoparticles for the removal of oil from oil-in-water emulsion: Regeneration/reuse of spent particles
View/ Open
Publisher version (Check access options)
Check access options
Date
2021Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The recovery of oil from produced water (PW) is integral for minimizing energy resource loses and creating an appropriate treatment method for a sustainable environment. In this study, Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (Fe-MNP) were synthesized using the combustion synthesis method (CSM) in the temperature range of 150 to 350 °C. The Fe-MNP were characterized using various analytical techniques and were used to recover oil from oil-in-water emulsion (O-in-W-emu) at various concentrations. The effects of the process parameters including, pH, oil concentration (Coil), Fe-MNP dose (DMNP), the surfactant concentration (Csur) on the demulsification efficiency (%ηdem), and the percentage oil removal (%Roil) were studied. Further, the re-usability of the as-synthetized Fe-MNP were examined and reported. The as-synthetized Fe-MNP achieved a %ηdem ≥ 98% for Coil in the range of 200–660 mg/L. Up to 98.6% of the %Roil was attained for Coil in the range from 0 to 800 mg/L using only a DMNP of 10 mg/L. A lower DMNP of 5 mg/L recovered up to 55.6% of the oil, while increasing the DMNP > 50 mg/L did not significantly affect the %ηdem nor the %Roil. The observed %Roil at a pH of 4 and Csur of 0.05 g/L was observed to be > 90 ± 0.1% and decreased by either rising the pH to 7 or increasing the Csur to 0.1 g/L. This change is due to the decrease in the emulsion stability and the formation of fine oil droplets. Stability and re-usability tests of the as-synthetized Fe-MNP exhibited an effective oil recovery of up to 90% after 7 cycles. The as-synthesized Fe-MNP demulsifier exhibited an excellent adsorption capacity of 51 mg/g and best fit the Langmuir and Freundlich models. The kinetics of the oil recovery process are properly adapted to fit the pseudo-second-order model for the Coil and DMNP. The tests indicated that the fastest and highest adsorption capacity was achieved at a DMNP (100 mg/L). As such, the results indicate that the developed Fe-MNP are an effective and reusable demulsifier, which are suitable for the oil recovery of produced water (PW).
Collections
- Chemical Engineering [1174 items ]