Study of oil sorption by expanded perlite at 298.15 K

Sorption capacity as well as sorption kinetics of oil onto four different expanded perlites with different physical and surface properties were studied. In order to meticulously measure the amount of oil to be sorbed onto the adsorbents used in this study both static and dynamic methods were employed. It would be worth noting that the adsorbent, i.e., perlite can spread on the oil and float on the surface thanks to its low density. The variation of the amount of oil sorbed onto the adsorbents with time was recorded and the weight of adsorbent was monitored at each specified time. The experimental results showed that grain sizes with high surface area can sorb oil to be spread on water surface. It should be also stressed that the experiments conducted were replicated three times and the results reported are the average of replicas. The results obtained were correlated with the first order, second order sorption kinetics as well as the intra-particle diffusion models. The results showed that the second order kinetic model studied can more accurately correlate the experimental data generated than the first order sorption kinetic and the intra-particle diffusion models. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.