Investigation of Cellulose-Based Aerogels for Oil Spill Removal
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Investigation of Cellulose-Based Aerogels for Oil Spill Removal Tatjana Paulauskiene & Jochen Uebe Ugurcan Karasu & Olga Anne
&
Ali
Received: 10 April 2020 / Accepted: 29 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Oil pollution caused by heavy shipping traffic in the Baltic Sea could be removed by the help of highly porous aerogels made from the waste. These could be produced from environmentally friendly cellulose, e.g., from paper waste, but would have to be hydrophobized for oil sorption. Such a cellulose aerogel was investigated in this research work. Six types of aerogel with 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 wt% cellulose with porosities in the range of 96–98% stabilized by unsaturated polyester as cross-linker have been produced. Aerogel’s sorption capacity as well as its regeneration for sorption of crude oil, marine diesel oil, and biodiesel sorption from water surface and mechanical strength has been estimated. It was found out that crude oil sorption capacity reach 29.67 ± 0.39 g g−1, biodiesel— 29.07 ± 0.26 g g−1, while marine diesel oil—26.26 ± 0.39 g g−1. The aerogel with 0.5 wt% cellulose shows the best sorption properties after 10 cycles of the sorption. Keywords Cellulose aerogel . Paper waste . Oil spill . Oil/water separation . Reusability
1 Introduction Large-scale freight transport, including tankers, contributes to environmental problems such as Baltic Sea T. Paulauskiene (*) : J. Uebe : A. U. Karasu : O. Anne Faculty of Marine Technology and Natural Sciences, Klaipeda University, Bijunu Str. 17, 91225 Klaipeda, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected]
pollution by oil products. This affects not only the aquatic fauna and flora but also the atmosphere (Paulauskiene et al. 2014). Innovative changes should be introduced to improve transport systems operation (Semenov and Filina-Dawidowicz 2017). Until then, sorption materials such as the particularly suitable aerogel could also be used to remove the oil from the water surface. Aerogels are filigree, solid networks whose pores are filled by air (Huesing and Schubert 1998). They have excellent physical and chemical properties, such as low density (0.0005–0.500 g cm−3), high porosity (80–99.9%), large specific surface area (10– 1600 m2 g−1), and high chemical surface activity (Long et al. 2018). Recently, sorbent materials derived from cellulose have become a viable alternative to synthetic sorbent materials (Zanini et al. 2017; Ifelebuegu and Johnson 2017). The advantage of cellulose aerogels is that they consist of natural fibers and therefore is particularly environmentally friendly. The aerogel itself is just as safe as the raw material—the cellulose. In addition, the material is dust-free and not brittle (Laskowski 2016). Various methods have been used to synthesize cellulose aerogels. However, the more conventional methods require severe conditions such as long reaction times, organic solvents, catalysts, high temperatures, and preripened cellulose starting materials (Gan et al. 2017). Cellulose aerogels are often produc
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