Characteristics of Some Natural Fibrous Assemblies for Efficient Oil Spill Cleanup

Abstract

-Oil spill cleaning is an essential head target for all environmental concerns due to its serious results in destroying marine life and vegetation. Cleaning oil spill is done by three main procedures, namely burning, isolating and skimming and collection. There is an urgent demand to improve a cheap and more efficient methods and materials for this target. Using natural fibrous resources for sorption of these contaminations satisfy most important criteria in oil collection direction. This work was done to investigate the efficiency of four natural fibrous sorbents, namely cotton fibers, seed floss of kapok (Ceiba pentandra) and milkweed or usher (Calotropis procera) and sheep fleece for sorption of three commercial petroleum oil products. Four densities of the fibrous fillers (0.2, 0.5, 0.8 and 1.1g/cm 3) as well as three temperature levels were tested on three different kinds of petroleum oils, namely diesel engine oil, hydraulic oil and diesel fuel. The scanning electron microscopy showed clearly smoothness surface for both seed floss resources and the roughness of the fleece surface which has an important role in oil sorption in the later case. The higher crystallinity investigated by the wide angle-XRD of milkweed seed floss than that for kapok reflects lower porosity in the cell wall nanostructure that offers additional mechanism for kapok to hold more oil. The cotton fibers had the highest oil retention among the species studied during the temperature range. Further, oil retention of the four fiberous assemblies decreases with increases in temperature from 25° to 60°C. Higher temperatures reduce oil viscosity, making it difficult for the oil to adhere to the sorbent material. Among the species studied, oil retention of cotton fibers was the highest (about 10 g oil oil/g of sorbent for the assembly density of 0.2 g/cm 3) and gradually decreased from kapok to milkweed and finally to sheep fleece for all the four assembly density studied. In addition, within species, the lower the assembly density the higher the oil retention obtained. Further, the assembly density of 0.8 and 1.1 g/cm 3 gave very low oil retention due to the shortage occurred in the capillary bulk within them. Further, within the assembly density, there is no significant difference between the oil resources determined. The clear effect is found between the assembly densities.