Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2009, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (10): 2026-2033.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB20091102

• ARTICLE • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Mechanism for Enhanced Oil Removal by Inorganic Salts during Washing Crude Oil Contaminated Soil with Alkyl Polyglucoside

HAN Mei, JI Guo-Dong, NI Jin-Ren   

  1. Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, Department of Environmental Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
  • Received:2009-06-29 Revised:2009-08-03 Published:2009-09-29
  • Contact: NI Jin-Ren E-mail:nijinren@iee.pku.edu.cn

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Abstract:

The effect of inorganic salts on the physical-chemical properties of the commercial alkyl polyglucoside (APG) APG1214 was studied to explain how it enhanced the crude oil removal. We found that the properties of APG1214 were different from those of typical nonionic surfactants. An inorganic salt formula greatly reduced the criticalmicelle concentration (CMC) and the cloud point ofAPG1214, which was beneficial for oil removal. Properties of the APG1214 aggregates were investigated using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). We found that low concentrations of inorganic salts reduced the size of the APG1214 aggregates while high concentrated inorganic salts led to larger aggregates. After soil washing, the distribution of the hydrodynamic radius (Rh) narrowed and the average Rh increased. TEM images indicated that the wall of the vesicles thickened after soil washing which confirmed that solubilization was a way of oil removal by APG1214. These findings provide guidelines for the use of APG1214 in soil washing as well as in other fields.

Key words: Critical micelle concentration, Alkyl polyglucoside, Inorganic salt, Cloud point, Vesicle