الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract The objective of this work is to investigate the use of an agriculture waste, corncobs, in the removal of oil spills. The surface characterization of corncobs was investigated using TGA to show thermal analysis, SEM to show the inner and the outer surface and the cross section area and FT-IR in order to gain better insight into the surface functional groups available on the surface. Experiments were carried out on the raw corncobs to study its oil sorption capacity and water pick up under simulated field conditions using Heavy Russian crude oil, fuel oil and gas oil. Different factors were varied to study their effect on the sorption capacity including particle size, sorption time, sorption temperature, reusability, oil type, sorbent weight. It is found that the best conditions are for particle size of 1.18 mm with sorption time of 15 mints, oil film thickness of 5 mm and at sorption temperature of 25°C. Also it is found that one day weathered heavy Russian crude oil has sorption capacity 3.26g oil! g fiber ,fuel oil has 4.23g oil! g fiber and gas oil has 4.31g oil! g fiber. It is found that the raw corncobs can be used for two times before the sorption capacity decreases to 50% of the 1 sl time. Carbonization was done to improve the hyDROPhobic and oleophilic properties of raw corncobs. Sorption capacity of carbonized corncobs was measured and the best conditions were obtained at carbonization time of 2 hours and carbonization temperature of 350°C of particle size 1.18 mm. Increasing sorption capacity may be due to the change of the physical properties of the surface of carbonized corncobs under influence of temperature and this can be seen from SEM of carbonized corncobs. Carbonized corncobs were applied in the form of a pad containing carbonized corncobs. Different factors were varied to study their effect on oil sorption capacity and water pick up including sorption time, weight of sorbent, dripping time, temperature and reusability. The best conditions were at sorption time of 5 mints. The reusability could be 2 times before the sorption capacity decreases to 50% of the 1 SI time. Bulk density for carbonized corncobs is measured and its change with temperature and sorption capacity was determined. Using sorption isotherm to determine the order of the reaction of fuel oil with carbonized corncobs at different oil film thickness 5, 7.5 ,10 mm were applied. It was found that the results were followed to freundlish isotherm. |