Energy Sources, Part A, 34:90–98, 2012 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1556-7036 print/1556-7230 online DOI: 10.1080/15567030903567675 Removal of Sulfur Dioxide by a Slurry of Jordanian Oil Shale Ash A. M. AL-HARAHSHEH, 1 R. A. SHAWABKEH, 2 M. S. AL-HARAHSHEH, 3 and M. M. BATIHA 3 1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Mutah University, Karak, Jordan 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia 3 College of Mining and Environmental Engineering, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Ma’an, Jordan Abstract This work presents a study on the capacity of oil shale ash to remove sulphur dioxide from air streams before escaping into the atmosphere. Slurries of different concentrations of this ash showed an uptake capacity of 4  10 4 mol SO 2 /g ash obtained after 250 sec. This value increases with the increase of solution pH, temperature, and ash concentration, and decreases the ash particle size. The process of uptake seems to be coupled with both adsorption of SO 2 3 on the surface of metal oxides and reaction with alkali and alkali earth metal hydroxides. Keywords absorption, air pollution, oil shale ash, SO 2 removal, toxic gases Introduction Air pollution is considered as one of the undesired changes in the environment associated with the development of chemical and related industries. The main source of air pollution is the emission of toxic gases, such as SO 2 ,H 2 S, NO X , CO, and CO 2 , which come from thermal conversion processing of liquid and solid fuels in power plants, refineries, petrochemical industries, and automobiles emission. Sulfur dioxide is usually produced from desulphurization processes of petroleum fractions, coal, and oil shale, as well as metallurgical smelting operation, and sulfuric acid manufacture. Sulfur content in petroleum ranges from less than 0.5 to 2 wt% (Erika et al., 1988). This value is as high as 7–9 wt% in the oil extracted from Jordanian oil shale by thermal cracking (Al-Harahsheh et al., 2005). This amount of sulfur is converted into H 2 S or SO 2 . There are several environmental drawbacks of toxic SO 2 emission. Acidification of the soil surface, poisoning of vegetation and living organisms, and corrosion are the negative actions of SO 2 contained in the atmosphere (Querol et al., 1999; Kachur et al., 2003). A number of effluent gas desulphurization techniques are available. These can be broadly classified into four categories: absorption of SO 2 in liquids, absorption by moist particles, gas phase conversion of SO 2 , and sorption by solids (Chattopadhyaya et al., Address correspondence to Dr. Adnan Al-Harahsheh, Engineering Department, Mutah Uni- versity, P.O. Box 7, Karak 61710, Jordan. E-mail: adnan@mutah.edu.jo 90