Oil spills accidents , always causes a major concern for people around the
world due to their bad effects not only on the environment but also on the
marine life. In the current study, two approaches employed to manufacture the
polymeric sorbents, which used to cleanup two different oil/water
emulsions.ploymethylmethaacrylate (PMMA), polystyrene (PS) and PMMA/PS
sorbents manufactured by salt leaching method, which used to separate kerosene
from tap water. Rigid polyurethane (PU) sorbents manufactured by reacting
polyol and isocyanate (hardener) in the presence of water (as a blowing agent) to
separate crude oil from sea water. Since both of isocyanate and water amounts
play an important roles during the crosslinking reaction, thus, an best
experiments were done to select the best hardener and blowing agent ratios.
Zeolite and expanded perlite fillers were added separately during PU reaction
(by 5 wt%, 10 wt% and 15 wt%) to manufacture PU composite sorbents, which
used to separate crude oil from sea water.
FTIR results showed that there is no chemical reaction among PMMA and PS
chains when blending and the resulting density decreased, which enhances the
floatability and the sorption capacity due to the phase separation within their
blend. Sorption results showed that after eight days, the sorption capacities of
PMMA are 5 g/g for water and 10.89 g/g for kerosene with 2.178 selectivity,
while these capacities were 3 g/g and 4.266 g/g for PS with 1.422, selectivity
respectively. PMMA/PS (1:1) sorbent absorbs 9 g/g water and 13.5 g/g crude oil
with selectivity reached to 1.5. Moro very Kerosene thickness results proved
that, as kerosene thicknesses increased, the sorption capacity increased.
According to the changing of properties of both water and kerosene, the
separation efficiency is not 100% and there is some overlapping between their
molecules. Also, it was noted that from AFM results that, The 3D AFM images,
showed that the valleys of PMMA sorbent have higher area than those of PS,
which leads to that PMMA absorbs higher fluid amounts. Most the roughnessII
parameters of PMMA/PS sorbent are higher than those of individual PMMA or
PS sorbents. Results of the second approach showed that, the best isocyanate :
polyol ratio to manufacture rigid PU foam is 1:1, since it gives lowest density,
maximum oil sorption capacity, low water sorption and maximum oil/water
+selectivity, maximum roughness parameters,roughness average( Sa), root mean
square(Sq) ,Surface area ratio(Sdr) and highest surface bearing index (Sbi).
Results, also showed that, the amount of the blowing agent (water) is 15 drop,
since it produces porous rough rigid foam with cavities on the surface and
interconnected pores within the structure, PU foam absorbs more than 45 its
initial weight and its absorption kinetic occurred rapidly at the beginning, then
became stable. PU foam did not settle during buoyancy test, which means that
the marine life at the sea bottom do not affected and the polluted sorbent can
easily remove from the spill location. The best PU composites sorbents are 5
wt% zeolite and 15 wt% expanded perlite. Expanded perlite increase the PU
foam porosity and absorption capacities, while, zeolite have better crude oil
selectivity, higher buoyancy time and crystallite size. Furthermore, it was seen
that the Temperature affects the selectivity in different manners, so that the best
selectivity for neat PU foam obtained at 50 , while for composite with 5 wt%
zeolite increased with temperature and for 15 wt% expanded perlite decreased.