On the prospects for the use of polymeric materials for sorbents intended for water purification from oil products

Abstract

Environmental safety occupies a major place in the extraction of minerals such as crude oil. The optimal outcome in the event of emergency situations during the production and spill of hydrocarbons is the use of mechanical frequent discharge using special sorbents. The evolution of oil-sorbing materials today does not have such filtration. Conventionally, they can be divided into inorganic, natural and synthetic. Efficiency depends on the use of oil-absorbing capacity, variety of applications, hydrophobicity and oleophilicity, as well as mandatory toxicity during operation. Modern technologies create sorbents based on foamed polymeric materials capable of pumping tons of oil by weight of 1 kg. Over the past 10 years, the authors have devoted to research to the modification of foamed polymeric materials to create superhydrophobic/superolefin sorbents. However, many works did not go beyond the laboratory, due to the complexity and high cost of the product. The purpose of this article is to identify the most promising polymeric materials with effective classes of oil-sorbing properties. A comparative analysis is presented in the paper justifying the choice of the quality of oil-absorbing foam material of non-polar polymers. Due to the natural hydrophobicity and oleophilicity, elasticity, availability of Russian offers on the market, there are opportunities for the development of this direction. The properties not explored of foamed polymeric materials based on ethylene-propylene-diene rubbers, which, among other things, have weather resistance, a wide temperature range of application, which is important for operation in the Far North or equatorial seas, where many other polymers lose their ability to effectively collect spills, high ability to fill up in the production of the mixture, which allows modifying the composition. A well-studied technology for foaming open-сell polymeric materials based on non-polar elastomers is added to the positive facts.