INVESTIGATION INTO THE CLEANING BEHAVIOUR OF NANOFLUIDS ON CRUDE OIL CONTAMINATED SOILS AT OPTIMUM CONDITIONS

Abstract

The research focused on the investigation into the cleaning behavior of nanofluids on crude oil contaminated soil at optimum conditions.This was done by contaminating 10g of soil with 5g stimulant – HV1 60 mineral oil and white mineral oil, in each case, 10 grams sandy soils was uniformly spilled with 5g each mineral oil.Subsequently, the simulated soil samples were cleaned using 15g of nanofluids prepared from 0.3 – 1wt% powdered ZnO, TiO2, and Al2O3 nanoparticles each dispersed in deionised water and their cleaning behaviors were observed with and without surfactants.Differential Scanning Calorimetric Analysis was used to determine the total weight loss, heat transfer rate and mass flow after the clean-up process of the soil samples.The particle size distribution of the A l 2 O 3 , T i O 2 a n d ZnO -water nanofluids was done using dynamic light scattering technique.The pH stability study was carried out by adding 0.5g sodium hexametaphosphate and 0.1g sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate, respectively, as surfactants, to ZnO A l 2 O 3 a n d T i O 2 w a t e r nanofluids as well as ultrasonicated for 24hours Oil cleaning efficiency of pure Al2O3 nanofluid was 74%.TiO2 nanofluid was 84% and ZnO nanofluid was 78% at optimum level of 1g.The cleaning efficiency of the nanofluids increased to 84%, 99.4% and 98%, respectively, when they were surfacted.The results obtained showed that the flow characteristics properties of the different nanofluids increased with decrease in particle size concentration.The contaminated soil samples and cleanup experiments were used to determine wettability, contact angle and relative permeabilities.The imaging method was executed to investigate how the surfacted nanofluids and mass fraction of surfactants influenced the contact angle and surface tension.In the contact angle and surface tension measurements a decline was observed for the measurements with surfacted nanofluids.However, the values of both measurements increased from 0.3 wt% to 1.0 wt% of nanofluids.The reason for this is attributed to the stability of the various nanofluids, and it contradicts the assumption of more water-wet conditions for higher nanoparticle concentrations.Besides this singular contradiction, the experimental results are in conformity with the expectations of my earlier proposal. These findings are comparable to the findings of other Researchers.