Removal of heavy metals from refineries wastewater

Abstract EN

In this study, the adsorption method was investigated for removing vanadium (V+5), nickel (Ni+2) and cadmium (Cd+2) ions from aqueous solutions contaminated with these metals, which simulate the polluting metals of the liquid wastewater of oil refineries in three Iraqi refineries, namely the Kirkuk refinery - Kirkuk governorate in northern Iraq, and the Doura refinery - Baghdad in central Iraq and Al-Shuaiba refinery in Basra Governorate, southern Iraq.

Three types of pre-prepared common adsorbents were used, which are activated carbon, alumina, and white eggshells in a batch mode unit.

The results obtained from the study showed that 5 was the best acidic function (pH) for removing vanadium and cadmium by using all adsorbent materials, while the acidic function with a value of 6 was the optimum in the case of nickel.

Likewise, the equilibrium concentration with the activated carbon only reached 150 ppm for vanadium and cadmium and 100 ppm for elemental nickel.

The nickel equilibrium concentration reached 90 and 75 ppm using alumina and white eggshells respectively.

The equilibrium concentrations of vanadium were 100 for the rest of the substances.

The results obtained also showed that increasing the agitation speed leads to enhancing the removal efficiency within less than 400 rpm and with a best contact time was 150 minute under ambient temperature and with an amount of adsorbent ranged between 0.3 - 0.7 g of different adsorbent.