Fabrication of polystyrene fibers with tunable co-axial hollow tubing structure for oil spill cleanup

Abstract

Hollow tubing polystyrene (PS) fibers (HFs) with porous shell were successfully fabricated through co-axial electrospinning and selectively dissolving and removing polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) core of the co-axial PS/PVP fibers using C2H5OH at room temperature. The size of co-axial hollow tubing structure (CHTS) and the thickness of shell can be controlled by varying the feed rate ratio of the core solution to the shell solution. The oil-sorption results show that the oil-sorption capacity increases with the increasing of the size of CHTS in the HFs, and the HFs have higher oil-sorption capacities than the porous PS fibers (PFs) without CHTS. It is noticeable that the diesel sorption capacity (66g/g) of the HFs is approximately 1.74 times as much as that (38g/g) of the PFs. The motor oil sorption capacity (147g/g) of the HFs is approximately 1.55 times as much as that (95g/g) of the PFs. It is suggested that the HFs have a better oil-sorption performance than the PFs, especially for the low viscosity oil, which is contributed to large CHTS and high porosity.