Adsorption of spilled oil from seawater by waste plastic

Abstract

Two environmental problems are encountered in this work. A solution of one problem is to find a useful application of the waste plastics; polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), which increases day after day all over the world. The second problem is the oil spill in aquatic locations. We used PE and PP waste powders and sheets to sorb the oil from water, via simple contacting for few minutes. The effect of subjecting the powders and sheets to a low dose of γ-irradiation (3 Mrad) on the activation of the current polymers was investigated. Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) examinations of the neat and oil sorbing polymers were performed to throw light on the behaviours of these polymers. Copyright © 2006, Institut français du pétrole.