Treatment of Water Contaminated with Petroleum Using Expanded Bed Adsorption Process

The water produced contains a series of organic and inorganic components that must be removed. Various processes are available to treat the oily water produced. The processes using copolymers can be divided into three mechanisms: flocculation, complexation, and adsorption. Expanded bed adsorption (EBA), a promising and practical separation technique for adsorption of nano-bio product/bioproduct, has been widely studied in the downstream process development. In the present work, a novel custom-designed composite matrix has been prepared through the method of water-in-oil emulsification. The physical properties of beads are wet density in the range of 1.23-1.63 g/cm3, porosity in the range of 82.29-90.75%, water content in the range of 52- 76% and particle size in the range of 50-350 μm. Solid matrix had a spherical appearance, a suitable size and size distribution. The structure and morphology of the prepared matrix were studied by the optical microscope (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).