Marine residual fuel sorption and desorption kinetics by alkali treated rice husks

An oil absorbent material has been produced from waste biomass with an alkali treatment process. The simple yet effective process is carried out on the agricultural biowaste at 90 °C and ambient pressure. The present manuscript considers the transient behavior of the sorbent during application, in particular the oil sorption and desorption profiles with time. The kinetics data shows that this lignocellulosic sorbent reaches saturation in <2 min of contact with the spilled oily liquid (marine residual fuel). The results showed that the second order kinetic model accurately correlates with the experimental data. The rice-husk product is shown to significantly outperform a commercially available sorbent in terms of uptake capacity (more than 18 g/g by the husk sorbent compared to 10 g/g by Corksorb). However in gravimetric desorption experiments, the as-prepared husk exhibited less favorable behavior than the commercial competitor.