Standardization of oil sorbent performance testing

Millions of barrels of petroleum and its products are transported across the globe every day. The hazard of oil spills is a looming threat that can lead not only to the loss of valuable products, but also seriously damage the environment and ecosystems. There are various ways of combating oil spills one of which is the use of sorbents. The ASTM F716-09 and ASTM F726-12 standards have been developed for absorbent/adsorbent performance and uptake capacity testing. However, most researchers do not use the procedures proposed by the ASTM when reporting their findings. Currently, the majority of the manuscripts published on oil sorbent testing do not use any uniform standard. Herein, we argue that the ASTM standards have some shortcomings that make them unattractive for researchers to use. These problems are discussed and possible solutions are proposed for more homogeneous and accurate reporting of results.