Oil Spill Clean up from Sea Water using Waste Chicken Feathers

Abstract

Oil spill is a major environmental disaster that has continued to plague the petroleum industry. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, there has been an increase in research on the uses of low cost environmentally sustainable options for spill clean-up. The use of low-cost sorbents is considered a cost-effective and environmentally friendly. With over 5 million tonnes of waste chicken feathers generated annually around the globe, the management of the solid waste is an enormous challenge. In this paper, we examine the adsorptive removal of different oil types from sea water using waste chicken feathers. The adsorption properties were investigated in batch adsorption experiments using crude oil, vegetable oil and diesel fuel. The maximum adsorption capacities were 7694 mg/g, 6059 mg/g and 4097 mg/g for vegetable oil, crude oil, and diesel fuel respectively. The adsorption kinetics varied inversely with increasing temperatures and was better described by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model.