AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE ABSORPTION CAPACITY & REUSABILITY OF COTTON & THE EFFECT OF SALINITY ON CRUDE OIL FRACTIONS ON SEA WATER (BAY OF BENGAL)

Jyothi Meher Nori, B.N.S. Anurag, V.Ananth Kumar Thimmarusu

Abstract: Crude oil is the most valuable component in today’s ever- demanding world. When this crude oil is spilled, there would be a potential to cause significant environmental impact posing a serious threat to aquatic and human lives. Due to this very reason there is a drastic need to recover spilled crude oil & oil spill cleanup is characterized to be one of the most challenging tasks for engineers in today’s ever-growing modern world. The previous methods used for the removal of oil from the spillage sites were oil booms, dispersants, skimmers and sorbents. These techniques were very expensive and showed very low adsorption capacity. To curb this very problem one can use the gift of nature provided to mankind, the most abundantly used material on mother earth, cotton, a highly absorbent material which is able to sop up 30 times its own weight in oil. About our work: A preliminary attempt has been made by us in our laboratory to study in detail the absorption and adsorption capacity (at room temperature 22oC), effect of salinity and reusability factor of cotton on various fractions of crude oil on Sea Water (Bay of Bengal) using various types of cotton (seeded cotton, mattress cotton, machinery/threaded cotton and clinical cotton) and readily available fuels. All the results obtained here have been recorded while performing the experiments in our laboratory and are based on our own original research. These experimental results obtained have been presented. Along with this a statistical comparison between the adsorption capacities of this latest method used for the removal of crude oil fractions to the methods previously used.

Keywords: crude oil, oil spills, cotton, adsorption, salinity, reusability, recovered oil.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0307036