Improvement of Oil/Water Selectivity by Stearic Acid Modified Expanded Perlite for Oil Spill Cleanup

• Published in: Shanghai jiao tong da xue xue bao Vol. 18; no. 4; pp. 500 - 507
• Main Author: 祁佩时 林娜 刘云芝 赵俊杰
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.06.2013
• Subjects: Architecture; Cleaning; Computer Science; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Isotherms; Life Sciences; Materials Science; Oil spills; Perlite; Selectivity; Sorbents; Sorption; Stearic acid; 地下水; 水体污染; 河流; 环境污染; selectivity; expanded perlite; oil spill; X 522; stearic acid; sorption
• ISSN: 1007-1172; 1995-8188
• DOI: 10.1007/s12204-013-1426-x

Ecological disasters and economic losses resulting from oil spills have reminded us the necessity for finding an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and available in large-scale materials to minimize the oil spill effects. The development of high oil/water selectivity mineral sorbent for the removal of oil from the water is of great interest for oil spill cleanup. In this work, highly oil/water selectivity sorbent of expanded perlite modified with stearic acid was prepared by solution-immersion processes, and the characterization of sorbent was analyzed by Fourier transformation infrared （FT-IR） spectroscopy technique. The optimized amount of loaded stearic acid （SA） on the expanded perlite surface was found to be 2.0%. Then the sorption characteristics of unmodified expanded perlite （UMEP） and stearic acid modified expanded perlite （SMEP） were tested. The effects of different particles size, oil/water volume ratio and sorption simulated condition were investigated. It was found that expanded perlite modified with stearic acid could adsorb selectively oil from water in oil/water system. The maximum oil/water sorption ratio of SMEP was 46, which was about 191 times that of UMEP （0.24） in studied experimental range. The FT-IR analysis demonstrated the presence of long-chain alkyl group in the SMEP samples, which played an important role in oil/water selectivity of SMEP samples. The equilibrium were tested with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models, and oil sorption process of SMEP showed good correlation with the Langmuir isotherm model.