Regeneration and characterization of spent bleaching clay

• Main Authors: Abd. Wafti, Nur Sulihatimarsyila, Cheah, Kien Yoo, Siew, Wai Lin, Choong, Thomas Shean Yaw, Abdullah, Luqman Chuah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malaysian Palm Oil Board 2011
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/23465/1/Regeneration%20and%20characterization%20of%20spent%20bleaching%20clay.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/23465/; http://jopr.mpob.gov.my/regeneration-and-characterization-of-spent-bleaching-clay/
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

Spent bleach­ing clay (SBC), a solid waste gen­er­ated from the palm oil refin­ery, may be recy­cled rather than being sim­ply dis­posed off in land­fills. The aim of this research was to inves­ti­gate the heat regen­er­a­tion of SBC and to eval­u­ate the per­for­mance of the heat-treated SBC in bleach­ing crude oil. Two types of SBC were used, i.e. (a) acid-activated clay, and (b) nat­ural clay. Two types of regen­er­a­tion processes were per­formed, i.e. (a) sol­vent extrac­tion fol­lowed by heat treat­ment, and (b) direct heat treat­ment. Heat treat­ment was con­ducted in a box fur­nace at tem­per­a­tures rang­ing from 400°C to 800°C. Red colour indices of oils were used to deter­mine the regen­er­a­tion effi­ciency. Spent bleach­ing clay pro­duced by the direct heated-regenerated spent bleach­ing clay (HRSBC) yielded a higher regen­er­a­tion effi­ciency than the deoiled-heated-regenerated spent bleach­ing clay (DHRSBC) pro­duced by sol­vent extrac­tion and heat treat­ment. This is because mois­ture, impu­ri­ties and dirt were more com­pletely removed by direct heat­ing than by sol­vent extrac­tion. Spe­cific sur­face area, total pore vol­ume and aver­age pore size of SBC were mea­sured using the nitro­gen adsorption-desorption method. The results show that the HRSBC at 500°C pos­sessed a higher spe­cific sur­face area and total pore vol­ume and gave a bet­ter bleach­ing effi­ciency than HRSBC at 400°C and 800°C. All the regen­er­ated SBC sam­ples were meso­porous material.