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.