Adsorption of Vanadium from Iraqi Crude Oil on Nano Zeolite and Alum Sludge

Abstract

Vanadium is considered one of the heavy metals that can be found in crude oil. Since vanadium is toxic to specific refining catalysts, the amount of vanadium in crude oil can affect its selling price. At the same time, it is responsible for equipment corrosion when temperatures reach high enough. This paper investigates vanadium adsorption by two adsorbents named nano-zeolite and alum sludge (residual from a sedimentary tank in a water treatment plant). A batch adsorption unit was selected to determine the effect of different operating factors such as adsorbent dose, agitation speed, temperature, and contact time in vanadium removal. The highest removal efficiency was 89% and 67%, performed at 2 g of nano-zeolite and 4.5 g of alum sludge, respectively, at 500 rpm agitation speed and 80˚C temperature with a contact time of 480 min for nano-zeolite and 420 min for alum sludge. Adsorption isotherm data was fitting to Langmuir and Freundlich models with R2 of 0.9665, 0.9727 for nano-zeolite and 0.9907, 0.9964 for alum sludge, respectively. Pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order models show excellent conformity to adsorption kinetic data with R2 of 0.9617, 0.96624 for nano-zeolite, and 0.97494, 0.96515 for alum sludge, respectively

Keywords

• Adsorption
• Alum sludge
• Batch mode
• Nano-zeolite
• Vanadium