Utilization of Expanded Polystyrene EPS Waste as Sorbent for Oil Spill Cleanup

Abstract EPS is a major constituent of plastic waste. Reuse of waste EPS which is non-biodegradable, to useful products is a way of effective waste management. Oil is one of the most important energy sources but oil spill accidents often take place during the oil utilization process, resulting in threats to the environment. We report the use of EPS waste to obtain an adsorbent material to cleanup crude oil spill from water. The effects of major factors such as sorption time, adsorbent surface areas, kind of surface (smooth or rough) and thermo-modification and mechanical modification (punching holes) were investigated. The experiments carried out with about 0.900 g EPS sorbent were tested for oil sorption for 5 to 120 min at 400 g oil only and at 50 g oil over 800 mL water surface. Oil sorption increases with increasing the sorption time's and surface areas. Surface areas increase with cutting the EPS pieces with serrated edge knife or/and cutting the EPS to 2, 4, 6 and 8 pieces. Oil sorption capacity (OSC) increased with increasing surface area, and so two pieces have OSC of 1.733 g/g more than one piece of 1.208 g/g of the same weight (0.900 g) and sorption time (5 min). Rough surface of EPS adsorbed more oil than smooth surface. Most of adsorptions were taking place at first 5-15 min. Thermo-modification (50- 90 °C) has no significant effect on oil sorption. Making holes by punching nails (0.1 mm diameter) into EPS contributed to increases OSC to 2.538 g/g for 5 min sorption time (1 piece). Increasing the nails diameter to 1.65 mm resulted to increase in OSC to 3.280 g/g for 5 min sorption time (1 piece) and 7.998 g/g for 6 pieces. The results of investigation indicated that the oil sorption mechanism of EPS waste meanly adsorption with slow capillary action. Oleophilic action between EPS and oil is the mean force governing the oil adsorption into EPS. The use of EPS waste in oil spill cleanup will reduce pollution in two ways. Reducing the garbage and oil spill remediation.