Photocatalytic demulsification of oil/water emulsions containing nonionic surfactant
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Photocatalytic demulsification of oil/water emulsions containing nonionic surfactant Asma Shubair 1 & Hilal Al-Salih 1 & Rana Sabouni 1 Bassam El Taher 1 & Awais Zaka 1
&
Hassan Gomaa 2 & Sara Hassanin 1 & Soha Salem 1 & Talah Zeno 1 &
Received: 25 June 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Separation of oil-water (OW) emulsions is investigated using a photocatalytic demulsification approach. Experiments were conducted using two types of photocatalysts, namely, ZnO and TiO2. The emulsion samples were prepared with oil to water ratios of 1:3, 1:1, and 3:1 and using nonionic surfactant Tween 20 as an emulsifier. The demulsification efficiency was determined using a direct time varying phase separation measurement, while dynamic light scattering (DLS) and microscope imaging (MI) were used to determine the change in emulsion droplets size. The investigation results showed that all the emulsions were destabilized and separated within 30–90 min with demulsification efficiency that ranged from 38 to 90%. On the other hand, untreated control samples remained stable with no phase separation for more than 24 h. For most of the studied experimental conditions, TiO2 nanoparticles gave better demulsification results than ZnO. Modeling of the batch demulsification kinetics for both systems agreed satisfactorily with the experimental measurements. This could allow its further extension towards design of continuous processes for potential implementation in treatment of industrial oily wastewaters. Keywords Photocatalysis . Demulsification . Emulsions . Zinc oxide . Titanium dioxide
Introduction For decades, separation of oil-water (OW) emulsions has been of prime interest to the industrial and research communities from both the economic and environmental points of views. The latter is of particular significance since emulsions are found in many waste streams including personal care products and pharmaceuticals (Luiz et al. 2016; Puschmann et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2015), food processing (Bai et al. 2017; Khouryieh et al. 2015; Walker et al. 2015), wood and metal (Chen and Tao 2005; Stiegler 2000), printing (Johns and Bain 2017), and petroleum industries (Mandal and Bera 2015; Rajak et al. 2016; Zolfaghari et al. 2016). Wastewater generated from Responsible Editor: Sami Rtimi * Rana Sabouni [email protected] 1
Department of Chemical Engineering, American University of Sharjah, P.O.Box: 26666, Sharjah, UAE
2
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
such industries if not properly treated before discharge into the environment would lead to oil contamination and higher biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and could pose serious threats to marine life and aquatic system (Cordes et al. 2016; Tornero and Hanke 2016). OW emulsions are typically formed when small droplets of oil are dispersed in a body of water. Although pure OW emulsions are considered thermodynamically unstable with tendency to separ
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