Characterisation of treated spent lubricating oil using activated volcanic mud / Noor Harliza Abd Razak

Spent or used lubricating oil generated from car engine is a hazardous waste that can pollute the soil, surface water or underground water as it contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Efforts are made to reuse this spent lubricating oil, if not properly managed can cause pollution to the environment. Bleaching clay is usually used to treat or improve the quality of spent lubricating oil. In this study, volcanic mud from Sabah was used as an alternative to bleaching clay to treat spent lubricating oil. The potential of the volcanic mud to improve the adsorption capacity of removing metals, impurities and carbocenous particle in spent lubricating oil were investigated. The volcanic muds were first activated with sulfuric acid at four different concentrations namely 1M, 2M, 2.5M and 3M. The properties of the activated volcanic mud were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FfIR), atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) and BET surface area. The properties of the treated spent lubricating oil were analyzed by the color of oil, inductive couple plasma (ICP), flash point, pour point and viscosity . The results showed that upon activating volcanic mud with sulfuric acid, the surface area and pore volume increased. This indicates that the adsorption capacity of activated volcanic mud improved. Further test such as changing color of oil, lowering flash point, pour point and viscosity support this fact. The volcanic mud that was activated with 3M H2S04was found to be more effective than 1M, 2M and 2.5M to remove impurities in oil. Activated volcanic mud was then combined with bleaching clay at 75%,50%, and 25% to find the efficiency of activated volcanic mud. The mixture of 25% activated volcanic mud and 75% of bleaching clays was found to achieve the same efficiency as 100% of bleaching clay. From these observations , we can conclude that the spent lubricating oil can be treated with activated volcanic mud. Hence, the quality of spent lubricating oil can be improved by adding mixture of the activated volcanic mud and bleaching clay.