Investigations on oil sorption characteristics of kapok milkweed nettle and cotton nonwovens

Abstract

Oil spill is a very common issue polluting the water body leading to damages to flora and fauna Commercially polypropylene sorbent is widely used for oil spill cleanup But this is not a biodegradable material Hence natural fibers having oleophilic characters such as Cotton Nettle Kapok and three types of milkweed Asclepias syriaca Calotropis procera and Calotropis gigantea were used in this work The fibers were selected because of their voluminous resulting in required characterization for oil sorption The physical and chemical characterizations of fibres were done using various methods The selected fibres had easy wetting property with oils and poor wetting property with water Oil sorption characteristics of fibers in the form of loose fibrous assembly revealed that upto 094 porosity values the fineness of fibers did not show significant influence on sorption but there was higher influence beyond 0.95 porosity Beyond 095 to 099 porosity values the effect of fiber fineness was significant in sorption The cotton fibers treated with alkali have not shown any improvement in oil sorption The Acetylation of nettle fiber has shown slightly lower sorption value than raw nettle fiber From this study it can be articulated that when compared to surface modified natural fibers raw natural fibers have shown high oil sorption Further using raw fiber may also be economical and environmental friendly newline