Designing super-fast trimodal sponges using recycled polypropylene for organics cleanup

Sorbent pads and films have been commonly used for environmental remediation purposes, but designing their internal structure to optimize access to the entire volume while ensuring cost-effectiveness, ease of fabrication, sufficient strength, and reusability remains challenging. Herein, we report a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2023-08, Vol.13 (1), p.14163-14163, Article 14163
Main Authors: Saleem, Junaid, Moghal, Zubair Khalid Baig, McKay, Gordon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/166
639/301
704/172/169
704/172/4081
Cavities
Chemical treatment
Environmental cleanup
Fabrication
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Oil recovery
Oils & fats
Polypropylene
Porosity
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sorption
Waste management
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Sorbent pads and films have been commonly used for environmental remediation purposes, but designing their internal structure to optimize access to the entire volume while ensuring cost-effectiveness, ease of fabrication, sufficient strength, and reusability remains challenging. Herein, we report a trimodal sorbent film from recycled polypropylene (PP) with micropores, macro-voids, and sponge-like 3D cavities, developed through selective dissolution, thermally induced phase separation, and annealing. The sorbent has hundreds of cavities per cm 2 that are capable of swelling up to twenty-five times its thickness, allowing for super-fast saturation kinetics (within 30 s) and maximum oil sorption (97 g/g). The sorption mechanism follows a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Moreover, the sorbent is easily compressible, and its structure is retained during oil sorption, desorption, and resorption, resulting in 96.5% reuse efficiency. The oil recovery process involves manually squeezing the film, making the cleanup process efficient with no chemical treatment required. The sorbent film possesses high porosity for effective sorption with sufficient tensile strength for practical applications. Our integrated technique results in a strengthened porous polymeric structure that can be tailored according to end-use applications. This study provides a sustainable solution for waste management that offers versatility in its functionality.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-41506-6