Magnetically driven poly(sulfur/oil) composite as an efficient oil adsorbent. Part-I: Synthesis, characterization and preliminary oil removal study

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Highlights

  • •Magnetite nanoparticles have been loaded into poly(sulfur/oil) composite material.

  • •The polymer, when spreaded over the oil surface, absorbs the oil and settles down.

  • •The oil-sorbed polymeric sorbent is easily removed by introducing a bar magnet.

  • •This offers an unique technology for effective oil uptake and easy removal of sorbent from the adsorption system.

Abstract

In this work, magnetite loaded poly(sulfur/oil) (MLP(S/O)) composite super hydrophobic polymer has been prepared by allowing reaction between sulfur powder and edible oil in the presence of magnetite nano particles. The magnetite particles, with 68 % of the particles in the range of 5–10 nm, were characterized by TEM and SAED analysis. The MLP(S/O) material was also characterized by FTIR, XRD, TGA/DTA, EDS and SEM analysis. The M-H curves were also obtained for the adsorbent material MLP(S/O), taking native magnetite nanoparticles as control. It was found that the composite MLP(S/O) possessed fair magnetization. The saturation magnetization MS for the native magnetite and the MLP(S/O) composite were found to be 27.889 and 7.996 emu/g respectively. In addition, the Remanent Magnetization (MR), for the samples magnetite powder and MLP(S/O) composite were found to be 0.172 and 0.0199 emu/g respectively. Finally, the MLP(S/O) material was used as adsorbent to remove oil from water and the oil-adsorbed MLP(S/O) was removed from the adsorption system by using a bar magnet with moderate strength.

Introduction

Recently, oil spill has emerged out as a serious threat to the aquatic environment as well as to human being (Ifelebuegu et al., 2017). Oil spill can occur through natural as well as anthropogenic processes. Natural causes generally include the permeation of oil from the ocean deep which then pierce into the aquatic environment (Pongpiachan et al., 2018; Li et al., 2015). A natural process involves organic matter from dead aquatic plants and animals leads to formation of crude oil (Granneman et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2017). In addition, oil can enter into water bodies through a number of ways such as leakage through tanks kept underground in fuel supply stations, mixing of oil containing effluent from edible oil mills into water bodies, discharge coming out from automobile repairing shops, etc.

In the oil spill high concentration of contaminants are released in atmosphere which effect society environmentally, economically, and socially. In general, spilled oil mainly affects our biodiversity, stoutish aquatic mammals when exposed to oil spills can develop inability to insulate, dissipation of digestive process, and liver functions which often leads to imbalance in metabolic process, dehydration, and in some cases when oil enters in lungs, and kidney death can also occur (Philibert et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2019a,b; Sun et al., 2019; Echols et al., 2016; Nattudurai et al., 2016). One more adverse effect of oil spill is release of highly volatile chemicals like benzene, toluene, PAH, oxygenated PAH into atmosphere (Xu et al., 2019a,b; Boulais et al., 2018; Han and Nambi, 2018).

In recent past, a large number of oil absorbing materials have been reported which include manufactured resins, flocculent, lignin nano particle, cattail fibers, fungi, cellulose Aerogel, interlinked multilayered Graphene ultra-light gel etc. (Nguyen et al., 2019; Cao et al., 2016; Ameen et al., 2015; Majumder et al., 2019; Vocciante et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019).

The major drawback, associated with the various adsorption based techniques employed for oil uptake, is the lack of any effective technique that could be employed in removal of the oil-absorbed adsorbent from the system. The reason is that oil floats over the surface of water and once it has been adsorbed by the adsorbent material, it is essential to remove it completely from water. In the case of oil spills on a large surface, it becomes very difficult to remove the adsorbent. Indeed, a magnetically driven adsorbent could have been a better option for overcoming aforesaid problem. Bearing this novel idea in mind, we have developed a super hydrophobic magnetite nano particles loaded poly(sulfur)/oil composite material that not only absorbs the oil effectively, but it can conveniently be removed from the system just using a magnet of proper strength which retains all the oil-loaded adsorbent particles on its surface. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study ever reported. A pilot demonstration of this new technique is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1(a) shows a beaker containing oil on the surface of water. As soon as a definite quantity of our novel magnetic adsorbent is added, it absorbs all the oil and then settles down on the bottom (see Fig. 1(b)). Now a bar magnet is introduced into the beaker, which retains all the oil-sorbed particles on its surface immediately as shown in Fig. 1(c). Finally, the magnet, with oil-sorbed adsorbent is removed from the clean water (Fig. 1(d)).

In this study we have synthesized poly(sulfur)/oil composite material in the presence of magnetite nano particles and carried out its complete characterization. An initial oil removal study confirmed that oil could easily be adsorbed into material synthesized, followed by its easy magnetic removal.

Section snippets

Materials

Ferrous sulphate hepta- hydrate extra pure (FeP(S/O)4.7H2O) molar mass 278.02 g/mol, Ferric chloride anhydrous (FeCl3), molar mass 162.21 g/mol, sodium hydroxide and Sulfur Powder (S) atomic weight-32.05 were obtained from Hi Media Laboratories, Mumbai, India. n-heptane (C7H16) molar mass 100.21 g/mol and acetic acid were provided by Merck Specialties Private limited, Mumbai, India and were analytical grade. Soya bean oil was purchased from a local general merchant.

All chemicals were used as

Preparation of magnetite nano particle (Fe3O4)

Preparation of magnetite nano particles have already been reported by several workers (Mascolo et al., 2013; Tajabadi and Khosroshahi, 2012). The co-precipitation of Fe(II) and Fe(III) in the presence of strong alkaline Solution results in formation of magnetite nano particles. The reaction temperature was maintained at 70°C and pH of the Solution was around 12.The chemical reaction involved is shown below:Fe2++2Fe3++8OH-Fe3O4+4H2O

Preparation of MLP(S/O) composite adsorbent

In this study, perhaps for the first time, we have

Conclusion

The above study concludes that introduction of magnetite nano particles into the sulfur/oil composite material imparts it magnetic properties and the adsorbent can be successfully removed by using magnet of moderate strength. Such adsorbent eliminates the practical problems that are usually encountered while removing the adsorbent after the adsorption process is over. It is also worth mentioning that the adsorbent prepared is having proper magnetic strength and so it will be successfully

Authors statement

We declare that the manuscript is not submitted to any other journal and all the authors/coauthors are aware of submission of this manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

We declare that we do not have any conflict of interest regarding our submitted manuscript

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