Sustainable Treatment of Crude Oil-in-Saline Water Emulsion with Licuri (Syagrus coronata) Leaf Fiber

Due to the toxicity of produced water, which is characterized as crude oil-in-water emulsions, strategies are required to decrease its potential hazard before its disposal into the environment. This work employs a raw biosorbent, licuri leaf fiber (LLF), to enable the discharge of produced water emulsions into the sea, following a reduction in oil concentration by sorption to levels below current regulatory limits. LLF with a BET area of 0.07 m2 g−1 was characterized by SEM/EDS, FTIR, and TGA before and after crude oil sorption. The results obtained from batch experiments showed that the sorption capacity increased when oil concentration in the emulsion varied from 20 to 100 mg L−1 and decreased when temperature increased from 300 to 320 K. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model fitted the experimental data for the emulsions with higher oil concentration. The Freundlich model gave the best fit for the sorption isotherm data. The thermodynamic parameters indicated that oil sorption is exothermic, spontaneous, and less random, controlled by physisorption. At 300 K, raw LLF can remove crude oil from emulsions with an oil concentration less than or equal to 100 mg L−1 below the current environmental standards.