Development of Functionally Imprinted Effective Absorbents from Petroleum Heavy Residue for the Removal of Water Pollutants

Industrial, agricultural and domestic activities of humans have affected the environmental system, resulting in drastic problems such as global warming and generation of waste water containing high levels of pollutants. As good quality water is a precious commodity, it is imperative for the removal of pollutants from the polluted water. The growing demand for efficient and low cost treatment methods and the importance of adsorption has given rise to low cost adsorbents. The proposed research aims to evaluate the potential of petroleum heavy residue waste as an inexpensive sorbent material for various pollutant removals from water. In the proposed study, a novel functionally imprinted effective absorbents from petroleum heavy residue will be prepared for their selective, enrichment, isolation and removal of selective pollutants from aqueous media. The absorbents will be prepared from the heavy residue of the Arab heavy crude oil of Saudi Arabia. Arab heavy crude oil contains about 60% of the heavy residue, which requires further treatment/cracking in order to get fuel oils. This is due to the geological origin and composition of the Arab heavy crude oil. In this study, we proposed to use non-usable portion of the heavy residue to isolate carbonaceous material, which is waste and problematic in nature. The carbonaceous material will be functionalized with acid treatment. The prepared adsorbents will be characterized by BET, EDX, DSC/TGA, FTIR and SEM techniques. The performance of the prepared adsorbents will be evaluated by various parameters including the influence of pH, contact time, temperature and initial compound concentration. Initially, two organic dyes namely bromophenol blue and methyl orange, widely used in textile and tannery, can cause anemia, insomnia, renal damages, central nervous system damage and dysfunction of the immune system, will be tested. Then the removal of at least chromium metal from the aqueous solution will also be carried out. The effects on the adsorption behaviour of the removal process parameters will be studied and the equilibrium data will be fitted by the Langmuir and Freundlich models. The proposed method combines the advantages of using waste part of petroleum heavy residue and its application in the removal of some water pollutants. It could become an alternative tool for utilizing petroleum heavy residue and its transformation product of adsorbents in complex water matrices, such as wastewaters, purifications.