EVALUATION OF PHENOL REMOVAL FROM WASTEWATER WITH NANO- CHITOSAN AND ITS REGENERATION POTENTIAL

Abubakar Abubakar Ibrahim, Abdulfatai Jimoh, Ismail Babatunde Adefeso, Fatima Muhammad Abubakar and Ibrahim Shaba Mohammed Published: August 06, 2025 DOI: 10.51975/25400102.som Pages: 16-25 Volume 40, No. 1, March/April 2025
Keywords: : chitosan; nano-chitosan; phenol; wastewater; refinery; regeneration. 1.0
Abstract: Phenol is considered to be a very toxic pollutant in refinery wastewater which poses danger to man and its environment. This study target was to establish the effective assessment of phenol removal using chitosan, nano-chitosan obtained from crab shells and their generative potentials. The crab shells were prepared and converted to chitin. The experiment conducted was at different conditions for both chitosan (CTS) and nano-chitosan (NCTS) to achieve basic polysaccharide of low molecular weight chitosan (LMWC) and low molecular weight nano-chitosan (LMWNC) for removal of phenol from the refinery wastewater. Various techniques were used to characterize both chitosan, nano-chitosan and refinery wastewater, such as Double beam UV- spectrophotometer, Fourier Transforms Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). The characterization of obtained chitosan and nano-chitosan absorbents showed good surface area, high pore sizes, effective size reduction yield of over 80% with good content of macro elements and good molecular weight. The values of calcium were 6.6972%, 5.6422% for CTS and NCTS respectively. The results of interaction revealed at factors of 35% sodium hydroxide, 3 h and 75 oC gives the degree of deacetylation (DD) to be 81.75%. The percentages of phenol removal were 87.88% and 98.77% for both CTS and NCTS respectively. The maximum regeneration obtained was 93.65 % which occurred at 50 mins. Hence, this showed that the synthesized nano-chitosan polysaccharide from white shrimp shells had the potential for phenolic compounds removal from refinery wastewater and the NCTS enhances the adsorption capacity due to higher surface areas.
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