Removal of ship borne oil from seawater using Maltodextrin – gum Arabic – aerogel biocomposites: characterization, equilibrium, kinetics, thermodynamics, and process optimization

Abstract BACKGROUND Numerous contemporary investigations on the physical, chemical, thermal, and biological processes used to treat oil from seawater. The majority of the approaches' primary drawback, though, is how challenging it is to modify them for direct field use in traditional treatment systems. Of them, the adsorption technique is the most easily adapted to traditional water treatment systems. In this context, the presented paper investigates maltodextrin‐gum arabic‐silica aerogel biocomposites as ship‐borne oil adsorbent from seawater performance and feasibility. Results The 10%, 20%, and 30% gum arabic embedded in 10% maltodextrin and 2% silica aerogel synthesized biocomposites ship‐borne oil removal % values were 13.97%, 11.83%, and 28.57%, respectively. Experimental data by nonlinear isotherm and kinetics models of Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and Dubinin‐Radushkevich and nonlinear kinetic models of pseudo first‐order, pseudo second‐order, Weber Morris, and Elovich were evaluated using STATISTICA (Version 8.0, StatSoft Inc., USA). Higher correlation coefficients ( R 2 ) and lower chi‐square (χ 2 ) represented that Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models and Weber Morris and pseudo first‐order kinetic models were superior for ship‐borne oil adsorption. The positive enthalpy revealed endothermic oil adsorption. The optimum independent variables resulted in a ship‐borne oil removal onto maltodextrin‐gum arabic‐aerogel with 2.91 g/g adsorption capacity. Conclusion The data from the first investigation in the literature on the adsorption of maltodextrin‐gum arabic‐aerogel biocomposites for the removal of ship‐borne oil from seawater are presented in this work. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).