Using treated Kenaf Plant Fibers as absorbent material to remove Marine Oil Spill

One of the most challenging problems related to modern industrial development is marine oil spills. Oil spills have significant detrimental effects on the marine environment and human life. The effects can be immediate through fish suffocation and erosion of their fins, deadly hypothermia in fur-bearing mammals, and ingestion when animals and birds try to cleanup themselves. Oil spills also have long-term ecological effects, which lead to an interruption of the marine food chain. When oil reaches the coast, it interacts with beach sand and vegetation, causing damage to the human environment. These negative effects are exacerbated by changes in the physical and chemical properties of oil after spilling. Many techniques have been invented to eliminate oil spills. However, almost all of the developed techniques cannot completely remove oil from the seawater. One of the most efficient oil cleanup techniques uses absorbing materials. Of particular interest are techniques that use natural organic (vegetative) materials. These materials possess many desirable characteristics: they are cheap, readily available, renewable, and biodegradable. However, to be competitive with the synthetic absorbers, the natural absorbers often require additional processing. A typical modification procedure includes carbonization, which increases surface hydrophobicity and improves oil-absorbing characteristics. Rational optimization of oil-absorbing properties requires quantitative characterization of the physic-chemical properties of absorbing materials during processing. However, current literature lacks such description-making material’s modification as a trial-and-error procedure. In this document, I propose to develop an optimized modification procedure for a new absorbing material based on the carbonization of a widely available kenaf plant (Hibiscus Cannabinus). Quantitative optimization of the absorbing characteristics of kenaf fibers will be based on monitoring their physical and chemical changes during the carbonization process by using gas sorption analysers and IR-reflection spectroscopic techniques. A quantitative understanding of relevant parameters (for example, the relative abundance of surface polar and non-polar groups) will facilitate reproducibly optimal manufacturing.