In Nigeria, over three million barrels of crude oil have been spilt into the environment contaminating 840 acres of land. The oil content of the soil (&gt; 1 %) is higher than the safe disposal limit for soil contaminated with oil (&lt;1 %). This research compares the efficacy of microwave (MW) pyrolysis to traditional pyrolysis, investigated using a Gray-king (GK) retort, for removing hydrocarbons from contaminated soil. For batch wise microwave pyrolysis, the influence of incident power, time, specific energy (function of MW incident power) were studied. Hydrocarbons from the untreated, GK and MW treated soils were recovered in dichloromethane/methanol mixtures denoted as soluble hydrocarbons. Reduction of organic carbon (OC) in soil was used to estimate absolute release of hydrocarbon. In GK retorting, at heating rate of 5 °C/min, 100 % solvent soluble hydrocarbon contaminants were removed at 500 °C, representing OC of 66.43 % ±0.93. In comparison, MW process operated at frequency of 2.45 GHz, 94 % soluble hydrocarbons were removed at incident power of 0.8 kW and optimum treatment time (7 min) representing OC of 60.28 % ±0.99 . Soil quality obtained at optimum MW treatment conditions was similar to GK pyrolysis treatment time of 125 min at 400 °C. At specific energies &lt; 700 kWh/tonne C16-C22 alkanes were recovered compared to C10-C30 alkanes at &gt; 1800 kWh/tonne. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as naphthalene, acenaphthylene, fluorene, fluoranthene and pyrene at specific energy &gt; 1800 kWh/tonne) were minor components recovered due to MW selective heating. Hydrocarbon recovered after GK pyrolysis composed mainly of C10-C30 and unresolved complex mixture of PAHs. This finding suggest that MW pyrolysis process reduces contaminated soil treatment time and the heating mechanism of the two techniques (GK and MW) has a role to play with regards to liquid product quality.

Remediation of crude oil contaminated soil: Comparison of normal and microwave pyrolysis

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.