Development of wheat straw derived zeolites for bioremediation of oil

Abstract

The rapid growth of industrialization and the ever-emerging new technologies have increased concerns about innovative emerging ideas of waste utilization and cost reduction. One of the ways is in the industrial sector to utilize & process rice husk, wheat husk or straw (lignocellulosic biomass) for production of a useful cost-effective material like zeolite. Zeolite is a superb adsorbent material which has been synthesized from inorganic as well as organic waste such as natural clay, fly ash, wheat husk ash, bagasse, rice husk, etc. Zeolites have great commercial value and thus in the present project zeolite have been synthesized from lignocellulosic waste like wheat straw and rice husk since these wastes are widely available and inexpensive. In this research optimization of zeolites production was done using different acids & bases. The zeolites thus produced were then analyzed for their oil bioremediation properties. The results showed that zeolites adsorbed different kinds of oil in a very efficient and effective way.