Spent Coffee Ground (SCG) has the potential of becoming a low-cost adsorbent for oil removal. However, the effectiveness of SCG as an oil adsorbent is limited by its hydrophilicity. In this work, chemical pretreatment of SCG with acid and alkali was evaluated as a means of enhancing its performance for adsorbing palm cooking oil. The surface morphology of raw and pretreated SCG samples was characterised using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The functional groups were analysed using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. A comparison between adsorption performances was performed in terms of contact time in batch adsorption experiments to determine the adsorption capacity of SCG-based adsorbents with oil. The SEM results showed that more developed pores were present on the acid- and alkali-treated SCG samples compared to on the raw SCG sample, while the FTIR results indicated the elimination of hydrophilic cellulose and hemicellulose on these samples. According to these results, both acid- and alkali-treated SCG have better tendencies of adsorbing oil compared to raw SCG. The maximum oil adsorption capacity (2.549 g/g) occurred after 150 min of contact time between alkali-treated SCG adsorbents and oil.
