Chitosan microspheres applied for removal of oil from produced water in the oil industry

Abstract

Abstract:The discharge of oily wastewaters in the environment is steadily increasing, causing serious damages. Among various treatment methods, adsorption is generally considered the most appropriate, since it can remove both organic and inorganic pollutants. Adsorption using low-cost alternative biopolymers for removal of contaminants from wastewater has been widely investigated. In this context, chitosan has been drawing particular attention because, among its many applications, it can be used in the treatment of aqueous effluents. In this study, microspheres were prepared by reticulation of chitosan with sodium triphosphate (STP) and studied for the treatment of water containing crude oil. The microspheres were regular and had surface pores. These microspheres were packed in treatment columns and their ability to remove oil was measured with a fluorometer, by the difference in the oil concentration before and after passing through the column. The microspheres that presented porosity about 80 % were highly efficient in oil removal, with rates above 90%.

Development of dual-sensitive smart polymers by grafting chitosan with poly (<italic>N</italic>-isopropylacrylamide): an overview

“…When applying pH-responsive polymers, the polysaccharides are preferred in many applications, because they join pH-sensitiveness with inherent biological properties. One of the most outstanding pH-sensitive biopolymer is chitosan [98,99] , a polysaccharide which naturally occurs in certain fungi [100] , but is extensively obtained by the deacetylation of chitin [58,101,102] , which is extracted from the shells of crustaceans, from the exoskeleton of many arthropods and from some fungi [103] . Despite the massive annual production and easy availability, due to its poor solubility in almost all common solvents, chitin does not find practical applications, except for being a source for obtaining chitosan [102][103][104][105] .…”

Gladius and its derivatives as potential biosorbents for marine diesel oil

“…Considering the results of characterization analyses and MDO removal tests, the ultrasound treatment has increased the available surface area of UT-β-chitin, which resulted in a significant improvement of its MDO removal performance compared with its source material (β-chitin). Reports on other sorbents also detected a direct relationship between increase in available surface area and enhancement in oil removal (Ahmad et al 2004(Ahmad et al , 2005aSrinivasan and Viraraghavan 2010;Farias et al 2015;Grem et al 2013).…”

“…Many authors attribute its competence to the positive character of its amino groups, that could either neutralize negatively charged oils (Ahmad et al 2004(Ahmad et al , 2005aSrinivasan and Viraraghavan 2010;Sokker et al 2011;Barros et al 2014) as attract slightly polar molecules present in fossil fuels (Grem et al 2013;Ferreira et al 2009). The cyclic conformation of carbons in the main chain of chitosan would also be responsible for a low polarity that could attract hydrocarbon compounds through Van der Waals interactions (Grem et al 2013). In this sense, chitosan was the sorbent with the highest expectations, and the reasons behind such results are important to stand out.…”

“…The potential of chitin and chitosan to remove many classes of contaminants have been widely assessed because of their abundance of raw material, non-toxicity, easy degradation, and possibility of structural and chemical adjustment (Kumar 2000). There are many reports of the interaction of chitin, chitosan, and derivatives with different types of oil, such as soy (Fäldt et al 1993), olive (Meyssami and Kasaeian 2005;Muzzarelli et al 2006;Pereda et al 2012), sunflower (Pinotti et al 2001), palm (Ahmad et al 2004(Ahmad et al , 2005a(Ahmad et al , 2005b(Ahmad et al , 2006, mineral (Srinivasan and Viraraghavan 2010), diesel (Bratskaya et al 2006;Farias et al 2015), cutting (Srinivasan and Viraraghavan 2010), biodiesel (Pitakpoolsil and Hunsom 2013), and crude oil (Sokker et al 2011;Barros et al 2014;Grem et al 2013). A comparative study assessing the removal of palm oil from an industrial effluent by chitosan and two commercial and commonly used sorbents, bentonite and activated carbon, revealed chitosan as the most efficient sorbent, removing 99% of residual oil and minimizing suspended solid content (Ahmad et al 2005a).…”

A Review of Chitosan-Based Materials for the Removal of Organic Pollution from Water and Bioaugmentation

“…Grem and co-authors reported that chitosan microspheres produced by ionic gelation of chitosan with sodium tripolyphosphate (STP) were able to separate 90% of the oil from produced water containing 200 ppm oil suspension using packed columns [64].…”