Abstract. Over the last decades, there has been increasing global concern over the public health
impacts attributed to environmental pollution. Natural materials that are available in large quantities
or certain waste from agricultural operations may have the potential to be used as low cost
adsorbent ,widely available and are environmentally friendly after using them. Thus, rice husk RH,
a commonly available waste in Iraq. RH and activated rice husk ARH (pretreated by 13M H2SO4
with 0.5 NaOH and thermally treated at573k) have been studied as sorbents for heavy oil cleanup
operations in the aqueous environment (water pumped from brooks to sedimentation unit). Batch
adsorption experiments were performed as a function of pH (2-10), adsorbent dose(0.25-1g ), initial
concentration (1-20g/100ml water), agitation time (15-75min) and different temperature(298-
338K),with100rpm.The maximum removal took place in the pH range of 8, adsorbent dose 1g
,initial concentration 20g/100ml water , agitation time 45 min and temperature 338k . The sorption
data obtained from studies at optimized conditions have been subject to Freundlich and
Langmuir isotherm studies .The data fits well to both the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models
indicating favorable and monolayer adsorption .X-ray diffraction analysis ,which indicates that the
RH and ARH mainly consist of amorphous materials .The adsorbents were characterized using
FTIR. It was found that the pretreatment of rice husk increase the specific surface area and changed
the functional groups, therefore leads to increase the capacity of adsorption.