Adsorption Of Anionic Surfactants From Synthetic Produced Water On CrudeSorb And Kaolin

Conventional treatment process cannot meet the need for treatment of produced water
from surfactant flooding of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) field. In this study, adsorption of
surfactants using commercialised adsorbent, CrudeSorb and natural adsorbent, kaolin were
investigated to assess the removal of surfactants from synthetic produced water. Adsorbents
were first sent for XRD to verify theirs mineralogical and SEM to determine their external
morphology texture. In the adsorption test, the adsorbents were exposed to anionic surfactants
in produced water and final surfactant concentration of produced water is measures using
titration method. The amount of surfactant that was adsorbed was quantified by subtracting
the concentration of surfactants after adsorption from the initial concentrations. The
surfactant removed was optimized at pH value of 2 for kaolin, and pH12 for CrudeSorb. An
increase in of contact time also increases the percentage removal of surfactants from
produced water on both CrudeSorb and kaolin. The adsorption activities for both CrudeSorb
and kaolin fitted the Langmuir Isotherm with correlation coefficients of 1.00 and 0.9962. The
adsorption activities also found to be fitted the pseudo second-order reaction kinetic model at
correlations coefficients value of 0.9993 and 0.9923 respectively.