Treatment of oily water with human hair as a medium: A preliminary study

Abstract

Experiments are conducted to study the effect of human hair as an adsorbing medium for the separation of oil from water, both in free as well as in emulsified form. Effects of various parameters on the phenomenon are studied and inferences drawn, which is showing an unexpectedly high efficiency of the process. It is seen that at laboratory scale, the method is very efficient. It is nearly 100% efficient for free oil. However, the most intriguing thing observed is, its efficiency in separating emulsified oil that lied between 95-99%. Experiments are also conducted to study the phenomenon at the micro level. The phenomenon, as is clearly visible under the microscope, is selective physical adsorption. Also, the separation results obey Freundlich's isotherm, thus confirming that the oil removal is due to selective adsorption. A critical point of view is kept throughout the experimentation and every care is taken to minimise the human as well as instrumental errors. Even if the process does not reduce the concentrations to micro levels, it can still reduce the cost drastically by reducing the amount of demulsifying agents required. As the process is eco-friendly and does not require any chemicals, it may lead to development of a new technique of separating oil-water emulsion, which is simpler.