The present work is to investigate the feasibility of removal vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) from Iraqi heavy gas oil using activated bentonite. Different operating parameters such as the degree of bentonite activation, activated bentonite loading, and operating time was investigated on the effect of heavy metal removal efficiency. Experimental results of adsorption test show that Langmuir isotherm predicts well the experimental data and the maximum bentonite uptake of vanadium was 30 mg/g. The bentonite activated with 50 wt% H2SO4 shows a (75%) removal for both Ni and V. Results indicated that within approximately 5 hrs, the vanadium removal efficiencies were 33, 45, and 60% at vanadium loadings of 10, 30, and 40 ppm respectively. Further processing of heavy gas oil with 10 ppm vanadium shows a continuous slight increase in metal removal with operating time. At 10, 20, 40, and 50 hrs the removal efficiency was 68, 75, 78 and 78% respectively. Results indicated that an equilibrium concentration of the 10 ppm of vanadium was attained after 30 hrs while for Nickel at a loading of 4 and 7 ppm the equilibrium achieved after 40 hrs. Results depicted that activated bentonite has higher selectivity towards Vanadium. Results depict that activated bentonite (ACB) has a remarkable capacity for removal of (V) and (Ni) from heavy gas oil.
