REGENERATION OF WASTE LUBRICANT USING ACTIVATED CARBON FROM ENUGU COAL
Abstract
In this work, coal based activated carbon was used to produce high quality lubricating oil from the waste. The raw coal was subjected to a modified form of chemical activation with KOH as the activating agent. The waste oil was pretreated by filtration, dehydration, centrifugation to eliminate impurities. Then, the oil subjected to acid treatment by combination with acetic acid.The bleaching was conducted by mixing the acidic oil with a coal-based activated carbon at temperature of 1100C at a specific time interval. Later, the bleached oil was neutralized using hydrated lime. The regenerated oil was characterized. The results showed that all the assessed properties of the regenerated lubricant such as viscosity, flash point, pour point, water content, density etc improved tremendously from the waste one. Further analysis of these essential characteristics of the refined oil revealed that each of them met the minimum specification of the standard lubricating oil.
