Utilisation of Oil Palm’s Empty Fruit Bunch Spikelets for Oil-Spill Removal

Abstract

Agricultural sorbents have received attention for their effectiveness in oil removal. In Malaysia, oil palm’s empty fruit bunch (EFB) spikelets are an abundant agricultural waste that provides a non-toxic, renewable resource of cellulosic materials. In this study, the effectiveness of EFB spikelets to remove oil spills from seawater pollution in a filter system was investigated and the best optimisation approach for filtering conditions was determined. Experiments for oil spill clean-up were performed using a filter-based oil sorption system with a series of conditions such as temperature, time, packing density, and oil concentration to evaluate sorption capacity, oil and water absorbed efficiency. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to characterise the physicochemical properties of untreated and treated EFB fibres. Based on one-factor-at -a-time (OFAT) analysis conducted at 160 °C for 30 min on 0.1 g/cm3 of packing density containing 25% diesel, 8.667 mL of oil and 5 mL of water was absorbed. In response surface methodology (RSM), the three parameters of temperature, packing density and diesel concentration were observed as significant. From RSM fitting model analysis, the predicted value obtained for both oil and water absorbed were 8.805 and 5.213 mL, respectively. The experimental RSM values of 9 and 5 mL of oil and water absorbed were obtained. The result demonstrated the validity of the model as the experimental RSM values were close to the RSM model’s prediction. As compared to OFAT, the RSM method is more efficient in oil removal. This research contributes to a better knowledge of the usage of a natural sorbent as a method of diesel pollution remediation.

Biosorption of Engine Oil Using Rice Husk in a Filtration System

“…The oil/water sorption capacity continued to increase, despite the fact that the efficiency of engine oil absorption (%) was decreasing from 10%. Puasa et al [34] that the equilibrium established when the reactive sites of sorbents are saturated with oil molecules, which encourage desorption, causes the efficiency of engine oil adsorption by RH to decline once the engine oil concentration approaches 10%. This is the reason that 10% was chosen as the best engine oil concentration, giving the highest efficiency of engine oil (71.67 ± 1.02) and the lowest water absorption (8.17 ± 0.44) compared to other concentrations.…”

“…Natural organic sorbents have received more attention than their synthetic and inorganic counterparts, although all three types of sorbents have been studied in depth during the past few decades [32][33][34]. Kenaf fibre, cotton fibre, sawdust, wood fibre, corn cob, rice straw, kapok fibre, wool fibre, milkweed, coconut husk, rice husk (RH), oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB), cattail fibre, hay, feathers, Guinea grass, and bagasse are examples of organic sorbents [29,[35][36][37].…”