Fabrication of cellulose acetate/cellulose nitrate/carbon black nanofiber composite for oil spill treatment

Abstract

AbstractThere are global challenges in addressing the oil spill treatment. Nanofiber has become a great potential in the oil spill cleaning process because of the environmental friendliness, high efficiency, low cost, and stability of the obtained nanofiber mats. This study presents a novel composite fabricated from cellulose acetate (CA) and cellulose nitrate (CN) nanofibers with the incorporation of carbon black (CA-CN/CB) for efficient oil removal. This nanofiber composite was fabricated in one-step electrospinning of 10% CA and CN solution with different concentrations of carbon black (CB). The morphology and fiber diameter of the CA-CN/CB nanofiber composite were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and they appeared to be smooth, uniform fibers without beads. The average fiber diameter was in nano-meter size and increased with the increasing CB amount in the composite, ranging from 327 to 755 nm. The FTIR results indicated the presence of CA and CN as characteristic peaks of C = O for CA and O-NO2 for CN. The nanofibers mats of the CA-CN, CA-CN/CB0.7, CA-CN/CB1.5, and CA-CN/CB2.2 composites had Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area of 15.29, 38.40, 4.08, and 6.17 m2 g−1, respectively. Under optimal conditions, CA-CN/CB nanofiber mats absorb more than their weight oil in just 30 min. The adsorption result showed that loading 1.5% of CB to CA-CN mats (CA-CN/CB1.5) was more favorable for oil adsorption. The CA-CN/CB1.5 nanofiber showed its reusability for oil adsorption. The Freundlich isotherm model was the most appropriate model among other isotherm models, including Langmuir and Temkin, with a value of correlation coefficient (R2) equal to or closer to unity, and this result was confirmed by the data obtained from studying different error function models. The adsorption kinetics showed that oil adsorption into CA-CN/CB1.5 nanofiber follows a pseudo-second-order kinetics model with R2 close to unity.