Novel Superhydrophobic Sand and Polyurethane Sponge Coated with Silica/Modified Asphaltene Nanoparticles for Rapid Oil Spill Cleanup

Ayman Atta,Mahmood Abdullah,Nermen Mohamed,Hamad Al-Lohedan

doi:10.3390/nano9020187

Ayman Atta, Mahmood Abdullah + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9020187

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Abstract

Superhydrophobic nanomaterials are promising in the important pursuit to alleviate the environmental pollution caused by the petroleum crude oil industry, especially to clean-up oil spills. In this work, asphaltenes isolated from crude oil were modified to act as capping agents during the synthesis of hydrophobic silica nanoparticles (HSNPs). The chemical structure, surface morphology, particle size, and surfaces charge of HSNPs were investigated. The contact angles of water droplets on HSNP film surfaces were measured to investigate their wetting properties. Finally, superhydrophobic sand and polyurethane sponge were prepared by coating them with HSNPs and applied in the cleanup of oil spills of viscous heavy Arabian crude oil.

Highlights

Petroleum crude oil spilled into aquatic environments during their off-shore well production, disasters, crude oil production, transportation, and refining of the petroleum products has disastrous kinematic viscosity of 88 cSt at 37.7 ◦C ecosystems
We report the formation of asphaltene succinimide derivative of γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (ASAS) via the formation of asphaltene-maleic anhydride adducts followed by the reaction with APS, as represented in Scheme 1a
hydrophobic silica nanoparticles (HSNPs)-2 was synthesized by the alkaline hydrolysis of silane precursors such as ASAS, TEOS, and amino oleyl ethylltrimethoxysilane (AOS) either in methanol or a hexane/water emulsion system, as illustrated in the experimental section and Scheme 1b

Summary

Introduction

Petroleum crude oil spilled into aquatic environments during their off-shore well production, disasters, crude oil production, transportation, and refining of the petroleum products has disastrous kinematic viscosity of 88 cSt at 37.7 ◦C ecosystems. Many methods based on mechanical, physical, chemical, and bioremediation are employed to alleviate and control the pollution occurring from the oil spills [1,2,3] Chemicals such as dispersants, emulsifiers, or demulsifiers, and oil absorbers are widely used, among various other expensive techniques [4,5]. The applications of surfactants as dispersants, emulsifiers, and demulsifiers were effective techniques for treating the oil spill dispersed in aquatic environments without recovery of the crude oil is not an economically feasible method. These limitations provide motivation to develop new oil spill recovery technologies. The challenges provide motivation for the development of new oil spill recovering technologies based on the production of superhydrophobic nanomaterials to form a rough surface coating on dust, sand, fibers, foams, and sponges with controlled wettability [16,17,18]

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