Isotherm Studies on Oil Removal from Produced Water Using Mango Seed Kernel Powder as Sorbent Material

Abstract

Oil pollution has been a major pollution source in most countries where crude oil exploration takes place. Produced water is the largest waste containing oil usually obtainable from oil and gas exploration activities. This water contains ?30% oil and is harmful to aquatic lives and the environment where it is disposed. In this work, mango seed kernel (MSK) was processed and used as oil sorbent from produced water with 93.33% oil removal from initial oil content of 30 ppm down to 2 ppm. The results showed that this bio-waste can satisfactorily substitute the costly means of conventional methods used in produced water treatment. The generated data from the sorption experiments were used in isotherm data fitting. Freundlich isotherm fitted the data better than Langmuir, Temkin, and Dubinin isotherms with coefficient of regression (R²) 0.9638. This showed that the sorption behavior is physical in nature and can be desorbed easily. Elemental analysis on the sorbent revealed that it contains mainly carbon (60.95%) and oxygen (39.05%). It was found to have a surface area of 0.0036 m²/g by BET method. The surface contained tiny pores suitable for sorption process. An FTIR run on the sample revealed the presence of several peaks indicating the presence of different functional groups.

Keywords: mango seed kernel, isotherm, characterization, produced water