Application of strong porous polymer sheets for superior oil spill recovery

Junaid Saleem*, Alireza Bazargan, John Barford, Gordon Mckay

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The usage of natural and synthetic sorbents in order to control oil spills is gaining increasing attention due to environmental concerns. In particular, polyolefins including polypropylene and polyethylene are the most commonly used oil sorbent materials because of their low cost but suffer from low oil absorption capacity. Attempts at trying to increase the surface-to-thickness ratio for improving uptake capacity makes them vulnerable to breakage and impractical for most oil spill applications. Novel super oil sorbent polymer sheets consisting of porous ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene have been prepared. The presented sorbent exhibits extremely high uptake and retention capacities along with a mechanically strong structure. The combination of these factors as well as the cost effectiveness of the material used makes these sheets viable candidates for widespread production and utilization.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)482-488
Number of pages7
JournalChemical Engineering and Technology
Volume38
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2015

Keywords

  • Film sorbent
  • Oil sorbent
  • Oil spill recovery
  • Pickup density
  • Porous polymer sheets

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