STUDY ON CHARACTERIZATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF HYDROPHOBIC SILICA NANO-PARTICLES FOR OIL-WATER SEPARATION

Oil spills, Marine pollution and Environmental pollution are maJor problems
especially in today's world. Therefore, there is a need of finding a new method to
enhance the existed method of removing hydrocarbons, which is more effective and
reliable. Through the researchers being done, there are a few methods that can be
improved and the most promising one is the separation process using hydrophobic
silica nano-particles. The principal scope of this research is to investigate and
understand systematically how the synthesis parameters. structure and modification
of silica nanoparticles affect it is properties and ability to absorb oil from water based
on the experimental outcome of the moditied silica nanoparticles. Thus. the structure
of the synthesized silica nanoparticles was varied systematically to understand the
effect on thermo physical properties and absorption of oil. In chapter one, the author
talks about the Introduction to the research with the Background of the Project and
also the Scope of Study where a brief description was given on Silica Nano-Particles.
There are a few objectives to this research which are to Synthesis and Characterize of
Silica Nano-Particles and to conduct the Experiment on Oil-Water Separation and
Optimization for Oil Absorbed. After that. in Chapter two, the author talks about the
Literature Review for the research. In this part, there were a lot of references taken
and a few journals and books were read to support the research that was conducted.
Next, in Chapter 3, the author talks about the methodology of how the Synthesis and
Characterization of the Silica Nano-Particles is done. The methodology of the OilWater
Separation experiment is also been shown in that section. In Chapter 4, the
author talks about the Results that were obtained from the Material Characterization,
Experiment and Optimization for Oil Absorbed and the author has discussed what
has been accomplished from all these three parts. Last but not least, in Chapter 5, the
author taJks about the Conclusion and Recommendation about this research. In this
part, the Conclusion summarizes this whole report and the Recommendation talks
about how to improve this research in the future. Thus, this study is aimed at
investigating the efficiency of silica nano-particles can be simply improved by its
surface modification with selected hydrophobic organic molecules in the specific
processes.