Abstract
Biotemplated Luffa cylindrica (B-LC) is used to remove oil spills from Mediterranean seawater. The main objective of this work is to develop a biotemplated organic sorbent. L. cylindrica is coated with chitosan for efficient delivery of oil droplets throughout the lumens of fiber. Thus, L. cylindrica acted both as a natural sorbent and a chitosan carrier template. In second step, the optimum conditions for the efficient oil sorption of B-LC are determined. Besides seawater tests, DDI water tests are also performed in order to investigate the effect of background water chemistry. Both modified and raw L. cylindrica samples are studied for the determination of baseline sorption capacity. SEM and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses are performed for the characterization studies. Results showed that B-LC has a higher sorption capacity compared to the raw samples. It is understood that increasing temperature has an adverse effect on seawater oil sorption value. It is generally noticed that positive effect of increased contact time and agitation speed is hindered by the increasing temperature values. Effect of background water chemistry is negligible. A slight increase in sorption capacity for the B-LC in seawater is observed. Overall results suggested that the B-LC can effectively be used as an efficient natural sorbent in the oil spill clean-up process.
Published Version
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