Effects of surfactant concentration on microencapsulated waste vegetable oil

Abstract

This paper highlights the microcapsule containing waste sunflower oil as a self-healing agent that was fabricated via the in-situ polymerisation method. The main parameter studied in this work was the effect of the concentration of surfactant during the process of microencapsulation. The surfactant used was ethylene maleic anhydride (EMA) in the ranges of 2.5 to 7.5 wt.%. The surface morphology study involving the size of microcapsules and the percentages of core content was calculated to analyse the prepared microcapsules. It was discovered that microcapsules were round in shape with rough surfaces. Also, the higher concentration of EMA resulted in a smaller size of microcapsules. This condition may be due to the surfactant playing a role as an oil emulsifier which reduced the size of the microcapsules as the concentration of EMA was increased. Nevertheless, there was a very slight increase of core content percentages with the increased concentration of EMA. It seems to show that the smaller size of microcapsules produces more effective encapsulation of waste sunflower oil. It can be concluded that the concentration of surfactant greatly influenced the microencapsulation process of waste sunflower oil for self-healing coating applications.