The Development of Natural Oil-Spill Sorbent from Straw Biomass Waste
Date
2015-01-09
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Abstract
The recovery of oil spilled on land or water has become an important issue due to environmental regulations. Canadian biomasses as fibrous material are naturally renewable and have potential to absorb oil-spill at different ranges. In this work, four Canadian biomasses (wheat, oat, barley and flax straws) were examined in order to evaluate their oil affinities and study parameters such as average particle size, moisture content, surface coating and reusability that could affect their oil affinities when used as sorbent. Moreover, one oil sorption model was adopted and then coupled with another developed model to approximate and verify the experimental findings of the biomass oil sorbent. The oil absorbency values of different biomass were analyzed and compared to each other. The effect of particle size on oil sorption capacity was also discussed. In addition, two flame retardant coatings were studied using a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). At the average particle size of 150-1000 µm, results showed that barley straw biomass had the highest absorbency value of 6.07 g/g, while flax straw had the lowest value of 3.69 g/g. Wheat and oat straws had oil absorbency values of 5.49 g/g and 5.00 g/g, respectively. The average particle size of 425-600 µm indicated better absorbency value for oat and wheat straws, while the added 11 wt% of moisture to dry oat straw decreased the oil sorption capacity up to 7.32%. The use of flame retardant coatings on oat straw biomass decreased the oil sorption capacity by 11.81% and 24.21% at 35 wt% of coating for flame retardant 1 and flame retardant 2 respectively. Furthermore the thermal stability study revealed major weight recovery for both flame retardant coatings at hemicellulose and lignocellulose degradation temperatures. It was also found that oat straw biomass could be regenerated and used for many sorption/desorption cycles as the reusability experiment showed 18.45% reduction in oil absorbency value after six consecutive cycles. The developed model, Penetration Absorbency (P.A.), showed that oat straw adsorbed oil at inter-particle level, while the results of Sorption Capacity (S.C.) model coupled with Penetration Absorbency (P.A.) model excellently predicted the oil absorptivity of raw and coated oat straw.
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Keywords
Engineering--Chemical, Engineering--Environmental
Citation
Tijani, M. M. (2015). The Development of Natural Oil-Spill Sorbent from Straw Biomass Waste (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28061