Experimental Design of Laboratory Measurements for Hydrocarbons, Salts and Dyes Adsorption on Modified Lignocellulosic Materials in Aquatic Media

Abstract

Waste lignocellulosic biomass is an abandoned agro-industrial by-product including wheat straw, barley straw, spruce sawdust, pine sawdust, corn stover, sugarcane bagasse, etc. Lignocellulosics can be used as natural adsorbents for dyes, heavy metals and hydrocarbons in wastewater, seawater, rivers and lakes. The thermochemical modification of lignocellulosic waste biomass can provide relatively low-cost adsorbents with increased sorption capacity and biodegradability, appropriate for the removal of chemicals, heavy metals and oil spills from aquatic media. This work deals with the design and performance of measurements on the surface of original and modified wheat straw and spruce sawdust adsorbents, using Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) specific surface area analyser, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Micro-Raman spectroscopy. For the evaluation of microporocity of the materials, non- destructive spectroscopic techniques were used, as Liquid Nitrogen Porosimetry and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), which were proved appropriate for the study of highly heterogeneous solid samples.