Revista de Ciências e Engenharia de Materiais

Demetallization of Nickel from Crude Oil using Aluminum Oxide (Al₂O₃) Nanoparticles Synthesized with Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS)

Abstract

Konne LJ, Iheanetu UD and Cookey AG

Aluminum oxide nanoparticles (Al2O3+SDS and Al2O3) were synthesized by a simple sol-gel method for demetallization of nickel from crude oil-water mixture in a batch adsorption process for the first time. The samples were dried, calcined at 550°C, cooled and characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. The XRD confirmed that Al2O3 phase were synthesized with more minor impurities of bauxite and silica in Al2O3 without SDS. Particle size estimations were 197 and 183 nm for the Al2O3 with and without SDS, respectively. SEM showed larger rectangular porous crystallites and thinner netlike- vertical platy crystallites for the former and later samples respectively while the EDS confirmed the presence of Al and O in them. The batch adsorption showed that the %Removal (%R) of the adsorption process increase gradually with increase in adsorbent from 0.02 to 0.1 g to a maximum at 86.1% for Al2O3+SDS but decrease with increase in the adsorbent dosage for Al2O3 with %R maximum of 78% at the least (0.02 g) dosage. On the other hand, at constant adsorbent dosage, %R of 94 and 93% for a 1:3 crude oil-water mixture were obtained for Al2O3+SDS and Al2O3, respectively. This confirmed greater capacity of Al2O3+SDS for the removal of Ni2+ ions from crude oil over the control.