Biosorption and Kinetic Studies on Oil Removal from Produced Water Using Banana Peel

Abstract

Crude oil production is accompanied by generation of large volumes of produced water.  The produced water contains both dissolved and dispersed oil and these pose health hazards to human health and contamination of the environment. In this work, banana peel, an agricultural waste was used to remove the oil component from produced water. The peel samples were dried, size-reduced and characterized for functional groups, surface morphology, elemental composition and surface area using FTIR, SEM, EDS, and BET analytical equipment respectively. Standard methods were employed for the production of biosorbent and removal of oil using batch process. The result of EDS spectroscopy revealed that the peel contained 88.52% C; 5.69% O; 2.19% Si; 2.80% K; and 0.80% Ca. Biosorption study with the peel showed that it can be used in the removal of oil (dissolved and dispersed oil) from produced water providing almost complete removal at an equivalent dosage of 267 mg banana peel per litter produced water after 35 minutes equilibrium time and initial oil concentration as high as 194 mg/l. Solution pH, loading rate, sorption time, and temperature effects were studied. Several biosorption kinetic models were tested and the result showed that banana peel biosorbent followed pseudo-second-order kinetics. Equilibrium isotherm studies on the other hand revealed that banana peel closely followed the Langmuir isotherm model.

Keywords: banana peel, produced water, biosorption, kinetic models