Novel Natural Sorbent for Oil Spill Cleanup

Abstract

A novel sorbent was developed using the aligning of raw unprocessed cotton fibers leading to low-density, hydrophobic, oleophilic, and sustainable cotton batt. Cotton batting developed using immature cotton exhibited oil sorption capacity of 50.27 g/g, which is significantly higher than the oil sorption capacity of many commercial sorbents reported in the literature. Fundamental mechanisms such as adsorption, absorption, and capillary action govern the oil sorption phenomenon, which were verified using environmental scanning electron micrographs. In addition, optical microscopy was used to understand the difference in the longitudinal cross section of the mature (base range) and immature (low micronaire) cotton, which was determined quantitatively using Brunauer–Emmett–Teller surface area analysis. Effect of cotton characteristics such as fineness and maturity on the oil sorption capacity was also investigated. Nonwoven cotton batts consisting of immature and finer cotton fibers showed oil sorption capacity that was 7% higher than that of cotton batts developed using mature and coarser fibers.

Oil sorption behaviors of porous polydimethylsiloxane modified collagen fiber matrix

“…However, these sorbents are non‐renewable and lacking in biodegradability may cause negative impacts on the environment and consequently restrict their widely application. By contrast, natural polymeric sorbents such as cotton fiber, kapok fiber, wool fiber, and collagen fiber have attracted much attention in recent years because of their low cost, renewability and biodegradability. However, there are few in‐depth researches on the oil sorbent prepared by protein fiber, in particular collagen fiber, as compared with commercial plant fiber sorbents.…”

Superhydrophobic graphene-decorated mesh gauze: recycling oils and organic solvents enhanced by large-diameter capillary action

“…1 mg mL −1 [41]. A piece of commercial cotton gauze (purchased from Xinxiang Hongda Textile, the yarn count was warp: weft 21 s × 32 s with average pore size of 0.6 mm) with area of 1.5 m 2 was cleaned by sonication in deionized (DI) water before immersed into 1000 mL GO solution.…”

Introduction of Ag/CuO/MCM‐48 as an efficient catalyst for the one‐pot synthesis of novel pyran‐pyrrole hybrids

“…[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Among all the OMS materials developed, MCM-48 with striking cubic structure comprising of 3D interconnected pore network has gained enormous interest in this area. Catalytic activity in heterocyclic synthesis, [22,23] hydrogenation, [24,25] esterification, [26] epoxidation, [27] β-amino carbonyl synthesis, [28] Ulmann reaction, [29] oxidation of olefins, cyclic ketones, sulfides, thiols, [30,31] alkylation of phenol [32] and acting as a photocatalyst [33,34] are some of these applications.…”