A Novel Oil Sorbent Based on Butyl Acrylate Grafting onto Cellulose of Disposable Diaper

For the first time, a potential co-polymer for oil spill cleanup has been successfully synthesized by the graft co-polymerization of butyl acrylate (BA) onto cellulose from disposable diaper (DD) using 2,2'-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as initiator in the presence of cross-linkers divinyl benzene (DVB) or methylene bisacrylamide (MBA). The copolymeric synthesis has been controlled by the concentration of monomer BA and AIBN, reaction time, temperature. The highest graft yield (GY) of 41.50% is obtained with the optimal condition: C AIBN = 0.04 mol/L, C BA = 1.50 mol/L, 180 min at 75 °C. The structure of co-polymer DD- g -poly(BA) is characterized by the FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), XRD (X-ray diffraction), TGA (thermogravimetric analysis), and BET surface area analysis. In the presence of the better cross-linker DVB (1.5%) and contact time of about 25 min, the maximal OSC (oil sorption capacity) of co-polymer toward crude and vegetable oils is 23.56 and 25.63 g/g, respectively. The OSC is reduced when sorbent dosage increased, but it increases with increasing the temperature and reaches maximum at 40 °C. The reusability of this co-polymer is characteristic of seven sorption/desorption cycles. Importantly, the Langmuir monolayer, chemisorption, and pseudo-second-order model are likely the best approaches to describe absorption kinetics of DD- g -poly(BA).