Abstract
This is short communication on organic solvents optimization in the recovery of base oils from lubricating oil contaminated soils. The performances of five extracting solvents namely; n-hexane, toluene, heptane, butane, benzene, and carbon disulphide were evaluated. A thermal treatment in an aqueous caustic solution and solvent extraction was employed to recover the base oil. The procedure involved adding contaminated soil into a NaOH solution at 80oC while being agitated. Then a solvent was introduced to extract the oil. Hexane and carbon di-sulphide recovered the most (85%) and lowest (45%) oil respectively. The solvent extraction performance increased with increase in solvent carbon chain length. 1:4 was found to be the optimum solvent to soil ratio.