The application of nanoemulsions with different orange oil concentrations to remediate crude oil-contaminated soil.

The petroleum industry stands out for causing significant environmental risks from contamination of the air, water and soil. The removal of organic pollutants from the environment poses a great technological challenge, making it increasingly necessary to develop efficient clean-up technologies. Surfactant solutions have been used to remediate soils and aquifers contaminated by hydrocarbons or crude oil derivatives.

Stability of orange oil/water nanoemulsions prepared by the PIT method.

This article reports the preparation and characterization of orange oil/water nanoemulsions stabilized by commercial nonionic surfactants based on ethoxylated lauryl ether (Ultrol line), by the phase inversion temperature (PIT) method. The orange oil/surfactant/water dispersions were prepared at different HLB values, by varying the concentrations of the surfactants as well as the concentration of the oil phase. The stability of the o/w nanoemulsions and the size distribution of the dispersed particles in these systems in general depended on the concentration of the oil phase used: the emulsions prepared with an oil phase of 14 wt% had smaller droplet size in the dispersed phase than the emulsions prepared in the presence of oil phases of 20 and 30 wt%.