Study on the sorption capacity of the adsorbent based on polyurethane and chitin to remove oil spills

Abstract

Nowadays, oil and its derivatives were considered one of the major energies and they also have been one of the main sources of environmental pollution, especially for water pollution. The tendency in this time of researchers was to find new adsorption, that has high sorption capacity, economical and easy production. By accordance with the present trend, in this study, chitin was used with the dose up to 50% as a filler in the composition of adsorbents basic on polyurethane foam (PUF). The effect of the size (small size: 1-3 mm and large size: 5-10 mm) and the dose (10, 20 and 50%) of filler in the foaming composition to technological parameters of the collected adsorbent, as well as to its absorption capacity were investigated. The results showed that the adsorbents filling with a lower dose of chitin (10 and 20%) were better foaming than the one containing a higher dose of filler. At the same time, the adsorbents containing small chitin also formed the foam better than one filling large size. For 2 types of PUF, the adsorbent from elastic PUF has higher sorption capacity than the semi-elastic adsorbent with the same dose of the filler. For the results of sorption effectivity of the adsorbents presented that the adsorbent with the small size of filler observed greater the absorbency than the one with large size. In which, the elastic adsorbent containing 10% chitin with small size has the highest oil absorption capacity, which reached 13.13 g/g. To compare the sorption capacity of the adsorbent between relation to oil and water, it shown that its oil capacity is significantly higher than the sorption capacity of water.