Oil Spill Sorption Using Raw and Acetylated Sugarcane Bagasse

Abstract

In the recent decades oil spills in the aquatic environments are one of the major sources of environmental pollutions, which are steadily growing with the increase in oil consumption. Adsorption is a rapid and cost effective process to minimize the environmental impacts of oil spills and cleanup these pollutants. In this work, the crude oil sorption capacity was examined with raw sugarcane bagasse and acetylated sugarcane bagasse. Results show that the acetylated bagasse was significantly more oleophilic than the raw bagasse and acetylation reaction can increase bagasse oil sorption ability by about 90%. The maximum sorption capacities of acetylated bagasse were obtained about 11.3 g and 9.1 g in dry system (crude oil sorption) and oil layer sorption, respectively. The physicochemical characteristics of the sorbents such as composition, water solubility, moisture content and density were measured according to ASTM standard methods. Also Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) of raw and acetylated bagasse was performed to investigate the effect of acetylation on sugarcane bagasse structure.