Evaluation of Butyl Rubber as Sorbent Material for the Removal of Oil and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons from Seawater

TLDR

Oil spills pose ecological disasters, creating a pressing need for more efficient cleanup materials. The study evaluates a novel macroporous butyl rubber (BR) sorbent for oil spill cleanup, using its macroporous polymeric structure to assess sorption performance. BR sorbents achieve 15–23 g g⁻¹ crude‑oil capacity—about 1.5–2.3 times that of polypropylene (PP)—retain 7.6 g g⁻¹ per cycle after squeezing, and efficiently remove PAHs, making them a superior, reusable alternative to PP.

Abstract

Ecological disasters resulting from oil spills have created a great need to find more efficient materials for oil spill cleanup. This research highlights the use of a novel macroporous polymeric material based on butyl rubber (BR) as a sorbent in an oil spill cleanup. The sorption capacity of BR for crude oil and petroleum products is 15−23 g g−1 as compared to the value of 10−16 g g−1 obtained using a nonwoven polypropylene (PP), a widely used commercial oil sorbent. BR sorbent is reusable after simple squeezing and its continuous sorption capacity for crude oil is 7.6 g g−1 in each cycle, about 3 times the capacity of the PP sorbent. BR sorbents also remove efficiently polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as acenaphthene and pyrene from seawaters. The results suggest that the rubber sorbents are a better alternative to the widely used PP sorbents by improving the efficiency of oil sorption and the reusability of the sorbent.