Oil spills can cause mass loss of aquatic life and are incredibly costly to fishing and tourism industries. Current methods of oil spill cleanup can be very expensive, have secondary environmental impacts, or be difficult to implement. This study employed five different adsorbents; Douglas fir biochar(BC), BC modified with lauric acid (LBC), iron oxide biochar (MBC), LBC modified with iron oxide (magnetite) (LMBC and MLBC) for oil recovery. Three types of oils (Transmission, Engine and Machine) were used to simulate the oil spills and perform adsorption experiments. The ability of differently engineered biochars to adsorb oil was found to be not highly dependent on pH and, with faster kinetics for sorptive equilibrium (∼15 minutes). The Langmuir oil sorption capacities were in the range ∼6-9 g oil/adsorbent. Lauric acid decorated biochar was found to have a higher oil adsorption capacity than the undecorated biochar and, also it enhances the hydrophobicity of biochar that prevent it from sinking. The magnetic decoration allows the exhausted biochar to be collected using a magnet. The performances of the adsorbents in real environment conditions were evaluated using simulated sea water crude oil spills. The oil-laden adsorbents were tested for their heating values and the results suggested the potential of using them as a low-cost fuel after oil recovery. The adsorbents and oil-laden adsorbents were characterized by SEM, TEM, EDX, FT-IR, XRD, BET, TGA, DSC, Elemental analysis and XPS. Mechanistic evidence from XPS suggest that adsorption is primarily due to pi-pi stacking interaction between adsorbents and oil. Exceptional high capacities could be due to the multilayer oil sorption.

Environmental oil recovery using engineered douglas fir biochar

2019 Fall National Meeting

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