Eco-Friendly and Economical Oil Adsorbents Based on PUF and Chitin

Abstract

Industrialization and modernization have led to a rapid increase in the amount of solid waste around the globe. To reduce the amount of solid waste that is discharged into the environment, it is necessary to select materials that have high reusability and recyclability. This study evaluates the reusability of the grafted oil adsorbent PPU10M based on polyurethane foam (PUF) and chitin. The result shows that the sorbent PPU10M can reuse up to 20 cycles after sorbent regeneration by the mechanochemical method. The amount of adsorbed oil is recovered up to 91.5%. The use of waste sorbents as the filler into the process synthesis of the oil sorbent containing waste is studied in this work. The results present that the sorbents containing 5% mass of the waste have the oil capacity equivalent to the sorbent without waste. At the same time, the water adsorption of this material reaches lower than in comparison with the non-waste material. This is indicated that the sorbent PPU10M not only has high oil adsorption capacity but also has good reuse and recycling ability. Thus, it is considered that PPU10M is a potential, eco-friendly, and economical sorbent for oil spill removal.