Biochar Production and Utilization in Remediating the Crude Oil-Contaminated Soil of Baiji Refinery

Biochar is the result of biomass thermochemical combustion. Biochar production, while characteristic, is highly dependent on the parameters of the production process and the technology used. This study shows that the formation of biochar through torrefaction processes, because of its wide availability of feedstocks and attractive physio-chemical surface qualities, has a significant promise of being employed as a worldwide applicable substance to remediate soil. This research emphasizes biochar manufacturing and its properties and capacity to immobilize and eliminate total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) in Soil. The efficacy of biochar in handling pollutants depends upon ion exchange capacity, surface characterization, and pore sizing distribution. The molecule’s texture and biochar’s physics composition could be critical when utilized virtually in the soil. In this study manufacturer biochar at low temperatures to remove polar organic and inorganic contaminants via oxygen-containing functional groups, precipitation, and electrostatic attraction. Additionally, the research investigates the influence of oil pollutants on soil properties and uses biochar to treat the soil that TPH contaminates. Samples are collected from different locations of the Biji refinery and classified according to USCS as poorly graded sand of no plasticity (pL). The contaminant is crude oil disposed of as spills oil from the pipeline and as waste collected in the Noory channel. The soil samples were manually combined with biochar and mixed occasionally to permit the chemical reactivity of contaminant soil and biochar. To know the influence of TPH on specific soil sample attributes and the capacity of biochar to treat TPH throughout the research period (7 months), several testing procedures are performed on both clean and contaminated soil samples. The test indicated that the TPH affects the physical characteristics of soil. The particle size distribution and liquid limit slightly decrease as the contamination percentage increases. On the other hand, the results show significant impact of biochar in cracking the bond of the TPH, degradation percentage was 18.2, 28.62, 36, 50.67, 60.66, 73.33, and 87.24% for spill samples and 17.95, 24.43, 33.35, 46.82, 55.53, 66.65, and 82.24% for Noory channel samples, which indicates that the ability of biochar treatment for spill samples is greater than that of Noory channel samples because of the high concentration for the last.