Synthesis and Oil Absorption of Chemical Modified Wood Waste Materials

Oil pollution remains a serious question. There is now a growing worldwide concern about the urgent need to control accidental and deliberate releases of oil during transportation and storage. The adverse impacts to ecosystems and the long-term effects of environmental pollution by these and other releases call for an urgent need to develop a wide range of materials for cleaning up oil from oil impacted areas. Wood fibers have been employed as sorbents in oil spill cleanup, which is economic and biodegradable, because of their relatively low oil sorption capacity and low hydrophobicity. In order to make good use of wood waste, a series of materials are prepared by acylation grafting with propionic anhydride in a solvent-free system based on wood waste. The grafted materials of the capability to absorb oil from aqueous solution were studied, and compared with the raw ones. It is found that the material is more effectively at absorbing oil after chemical modification than the raw one. And the grafted material is significantly more hydrophobic. The samples are characterized by XRD, FT-IR and thermal analysis.