Magnetically recoverable magnetite-reduced graphene oxide as a demulsifier for surfactant stabilized crude oil-in-water emulsion
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2020
Abstract
Oily wastewater, especially water-oil emulsion has become serious environmental issue and received global attention. Chemical demulsifiers are widely used to treat oil-water emulsion, but the toxicity, non-recyclable and non-environmental friendly characteristic of chemical demulsifiers had limited their practical application in oil-water separation. Therefore, it is imperative to develop an efficient, simple, eco-friendly and recyclable demulsifiers for breaking up the emulsions from the oily wastewater. In this study, a magnetic demulsifier, magnetite-reduced graphene oxide (M-rGO) nanocomposites were proposed as a recyclable demulsifier to break up the surfactant stabilized crude oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion. M-rGO nanocomposites were prepared via in situ chemical synthesis by using only one type Fe salt and GO solid as precursor at room temperature. The prepared composites were fully characterized by various techniques. The effect of demulsifier dosage and pH of emulsion on demulsification efficiency (ED) has been studied in detailed. The demulsification mechanism was also proposed in this study. Results showed that M-rGO nanocomposites were able to demulsify crude O/W emulsion. The ED reaches 99.48% when 0.050 wt.% of M-rGO nanocomposites were added to crude O/W emulsion (pH = 4). Besides, M-rGO nanocomposites can be recycled up to 7 cycles without showing a significant change in terms of ED. Thus, M-rGO nanocomposite is a promising demulsifier for surfactant stabilized crude O/W emulsion. © 2020 Yau et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords
Emulsions, Emulsification, Demulsification efficiency
Divisions
nanotechnology
Funders
Yayasan Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (YUTP) Grant (YUTP 0153AA-E40),Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2019/STG07/UTP/02/6)
Publication Title
PLoS ONE
Volume
15
Issue
4
Publisher
Public Library of Science