Removal of Oil from Oil Produced Water Using Eggshell

The presence of dissolved crude oil in water poses significant environmental hazards to aquatic lives. Components of dissolved oil, BTEX which are carcinogenic can cause cancer after a long time of exposure. Eggshell, a potential biosorbent was used to remove both dissolved and dispersed oil in produced water. It was conditioned to provide good oil uptake in its natural form. The biosorbent material was characterized using FT-IR, SEM, XRD, BET and EDS techniques. The results showed that eggshell contains calcium, carbon and oxygen in proportions of 37.4, 48.5 and 14.1 atomic percent respectively. Biosorption experiments with the eggshell biosorbent showed that it can be used for crude oil removal from produced water providing almost 100% at concentration of 1.8 g eggshell/L of produced water and oil concentration as high as 194 mg/l. Several kinetic models were tested and it was discovered that the biosorbent followed pseudo-second order biosorption kinetics. The value of qe deduced from the slope of the curve was 108.69 mg/g and the value of rate constant (k2) was found to be 0.019 g.mg-1min-1. This result showed that eggshell is a good biosorbent for crude oil removal in produced water. It will provide a cheap way of cleaning oily contaminated water environment thus safeguarding human health, aquatic lives, and soil fertility. Keywords: eggshell, oil removal, produced water, environment, biosorption, biosorben