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. 2024 Mar 20;10(7):e28427.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e28427. eCollection 2024 Apr 15.

Chemically treated Posidonia oceanica fibers as a potential sorbent for oil spill clean up

Senda Ben Jmaa  1 , Amjad Kallel  1
Affiliations

Chemically treated Posidonia oceanica fibers as a potential sorbent for oil spill clean up

Senda Ben Jmaa et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Posidonia oceanica (PO) fibers were used as biodegradable solid waste material in the removal of oil spills from seawater. In the present study, PO fibers were chemically treated using H3PO4, KOH, ZnCl2 and H2O2. The Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to compare and to determine the structure of the raw and the chemically-treated PO fibers. The main parameters studied in the two systems, a mixture system of oil and water and a system with only oil or only water, were the chemical solutions concentrations, initial oil concentration and time contact. The results revealed that PO fibers treated with phosphoric acid (H3PO4) showed an enhancement of oil sorption of 12% in oil/water layer, compared to raw PO fibers. An increase of hydrophobicity was also observed with treated fibers as revealed by the 50% decrease in water sorption capacity. The isotherm and kinetic models were determined to reveal the nature and the mechanism of the sorption. Langmuir isotherm appeared to be the best fitting model showing a one-layer oil sorption onto PO fibers. In addition, the results fitted well with the pseudo-second order kinetic model compared to pseudo-first order representing the chemical sorption of oil. The results indicated that the treated biosorbent could be used as biodegradable material to clean-up oil spills in aqueous solution.

Keywords: Chemical treatment; Hydrophobicity; Kinetics and isotherm studies; Oil spill removal; Posidonia oceanica fibers; Sorption capacity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
FTIR spectra of raw and treated PO fibers.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
SEM of (a) Raw PO fibers, (b) KOH treated PO fibers and (c) H3PO4 treated PO fibers.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Real photos of (a) Raw PO fibers, (b) KOH treated PO fibers and (c) H3PO4 treated PO fibers.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Effect of the treatment type and concentration on sorption capacity in a single-phase system. a,b,c,d Different letters for the same adsorbed liquid (oil or water) for different treatments indicated significant differences (p < 0.05).
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Effect of reaction time and initial oil concentration on oil sorption capacity in oil/water mixture for treated PO fibers with 0.5 M H3PO4 (a) and 0.5 M KOH (b).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Raw and treated PO fibers hydrophobicity at equilibrium oil concentration (30 g/l). a,b,c Different letters for the same fiber samples and different treatment times indicated significant differences (p < 0.05).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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