Elsevier

Science of The Total Environment

Volume 647, 10 January 2019, Pages 88-98
Science of The Total Environment

Extrinsically magnetic poly(butylene succinate): An up-and-coming petroleum cleanup tool

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.421Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This paper deals with the control of petroleum spilled out.

  • The synthesis and characterization of extrinsically magnetic PBS is presented.

  • The best material can remove 11 g of oil per gram of composite.

  • The best material is a better choice than peat.

  • Aliphatic/aromatic balance is the key to a higher oil sorption capability.

Abstract

This work presents the synthesis and characterization of extrinsically magnetic poly(butylene succinate) (PBS). PBS is obtained from succinic acid (SA), which can be efficiently produced from renewable biomass by fermentation. Thus, the use of SA helps to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, constituting a good way to accumulate carbon credits. The magnetic PBS here presented was prepared by fusion using different amounts of maghemite. Obtained materials were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Small angle X-ray scattering and magnetic force tests. Besides, the oil removal capability (OR) of the samples was also studied. All the magnetic composites were able to remove petroleum from the water. Among them, the one filled with the highest amount of magnetic particles was able to remove 11 g of oil per gram of composite. Also, XRD and SAXS results showed that PBS is a long size oriented material, which allows it to work as a thermoset, avoiding its dissolution in organic contaminant medium. As PBS can also be considered as a platform, these are promising results for the oil spill cleanup applications.

Introduction

The oil extraction has been widening over the years. For instance, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (accessed in February 2018) during 2006 were produced 85.198 k barrels per day and during 2016 the number increased to 97.023 k barrels per day (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2018). Due to the evolution of technology the exploration of this resource is mainly offshore. The impact of accidents increases in this scenario and the tendency is getting even higher in the future (A repeated sampling method for oil spill impact uncertainty and interpolation, 2017; Carroll et al., 2018; Clancy et al., 2018; Motta et al., 2018). Among them, the most noticed were: Amoco Cadiz, 1978 (Brittany, France - 68.7 million of gallons); Ixtoc 1 Oil Well, 1979 (Bay of Campeche, Mexico - 140 million of gallons); Atlantic Empress, 1979 (Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies - 88.3 million of gallons); Nowruz Oil Field, 1983 (Persian Gulf - 80 million of gallons); Castillo de Bellver, 1983 (Saldanha Bay, South Africa - 78.5 million of gallons); Odyssey Oil Spill, 1988 (Nova Scotia, Canada - 43 million of gallons); M/T Haven Tanker, 1991 (Genova, Italy - 42 million of gallons); ABT Summer, 1991 (Coast of Angola - 80 million of gallons); Gulf War, 1991 (Kuwait - up to 336 million of gallons); Fergana Valley, 1992 (Uzbekistan - 87.7 million of gallons); and Deepwater Horizon, 2010 (Gulf of Mexico - 30 million of gallon) (Duan et al., 2018; Kaiser and Liu, 2018; Messina et al., 2016; Murphy et al., 2016; Rabalais et al., 2018; Wise et al., 2018).

Ismail and Karim (2013) listed 66 disasters evolving tanks, and they concluded that, between 1964 and 2011, around 4270 K MT of petroleum were spilled worldwide. The damage to the environment is immeasurable since so many toxic substances in the sea increases and increases, producing severe damages to fauna and flora (Giari et al., 2012; Gunster et al., 1993; Heibati et al., 2017). Besides, some of the cleanup techniques, such as the use of dispersants, create mutations in wildlife (Medeiros et al., 2017). Beyond the environmental impacts, there were many economic losses, mainly suffered by the fishing and tourism industries. Thus, there is a global concern about the oil spill issue, and new technologies and materials are always researched.

Ordinarily, petroleum is sorbed using peat, a conventional raw material. One gram of this material can sorb around 4 g of oil when exposed to this medium for 5 min (Klavins et al., 2012). Among the new technologies, the use of polymer systems is widely researched, and several studies reported these systems as oil spill cleanup tools (Adebajo et al., 2003; Ferreira et al., 2012; Grance et al., 2012; Reynolds et al., 2001; Li et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2012; Marques et al., 2016; Varela et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2011).

In this context, the use of magnetic nanocomposites based on biopolymers (Doshi et al., 2018a, Doshi et al., 2018b; Lobakova et al., 2016; Wilton et al., 2018) can improve the efficiency of the cleanup process since these composites can be easily removed from the water by the utilization of a magnetic field (Avila et al., 2014; Gu et al., 2014; Raj and Joy, 2015; Su et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2016). For instance, our group produced a magnetic PU based on castor oil, toluene diisocyanate, and water by a bulk polymerization (Lopes et al., 2010). One gram of this material was able to remove 4 g of petroleum from the water. In other work, we prepared a magnetic resin based on lignin from Kraft process (Grance et al., 2012). One gram of this material was able to remove 11 g of oil from water. In turn, 1 g of our cardanol-furfuraldehyde/maghemite magnetic composites was able to remove 10 g of petroleum from the water (Varela et al., 2013). A similar material filled with acetylated curaua fibers was able to remove 12 parts of oil per gram of the composite from water (Varela et al., 2013). In our last work, we prepared an aliphatic/aromatic polyester matrix filled with coffee ground powder and maghemite (Marques et al., 2016). One gram of this material was able to remove 25 g of the petroleum from the water. Therefore, the use of polyesters is promising.

Among green polymers, the poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) is obtained by the polycondensation of 1,4-butanediol and succinic acid (Bourmaud et al., 2015; Charlier et al., 2015; Ferreira et al., 2017; Frollini et al., 2013; Li et al., 2014; Luzi et al., 2016; Nerantzaki et al., 2015; Phua et al., 2013). PBS is an aliphatic, thermoplastic and crystalline polyester with excellent thermal and mechanical properties (Di Lorenzo et al., 2017; Gigli et al., 2016). Also, due to new biotechnological routes used to the preparation of the succinic acid, this polymer is considered as a future platform material (Cheng et al., 2012; Xu and Guo, 2010). Nowadays, succinic acid can be efficiently produced from renewable biomass, such as crop stalks wastes, by batch fermentation (Li et al., 2010) helping to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (Nghiem et al., 2010). Thus, besides succinic acid is becoming cheaper, the use of this chemical can be a profitable way to accumulate carbon credits. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, PBS was never used as an oil spill cleanup tool. Therefore, the primary objective of this work is the synthesis, characterization of PBS/maghemite nanocomposites and the use of these materials as a petroleum cleanup tool. In the best case, each gram of the magnetic material was able to remove 11 g of the oil. This amount of removed oil is a promising result for the oil spill cleanup applications.

Section snippets

Materials

Poly(1,4-butylene succinate), Lot#MKBX5346V; hydrochloric acid (HCl); ferric chloride (FeCl3); anhydrous sodium sulfite (Na2SO3); potassium hydroxide (KOH) and polyvinyl alcohol were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich at analytical grade. Petroleum [density: 0.9697 g/cm3; API (@60 °F): 13.39; viscosity 6994 mPa·s] was kindly donated by PETROBRAS.

Synthesis of maghemite

As described in previous works (da Costa and Souza Jr., 2014; Grance et al., 2012; Lopes et al., 2010; Neves et al., 2011; Oliveira et al., 2013; Pereira et

Results

The magnetite synthesis procedure by homogeneous co-precipitation produced a dark colored material, which, after oxidation at 250 °C, shifts to a reddish one, named maghemite. Similar results were found by other authors (Roca et al., 2007; Schwertmann and Cornell, 2008). Composites were prepared using different amounts of maghemite and the observed weight losses, with a confidence limit of 95%, were equal to 19 ± 11%.

Fig. 1 shows the FTIR spectra of maghemite, PBS, and composites. The maghemite

Conclusions

PBS, mainly due to its high crystallinity degree behaves as an insoluble material in petroleum. The melting mixing preparation did not affect the crystallinity of the tested materials neither the intrinsic properties of the nanoparticles, as demonstrated by XRD tests, allowing the development of magnetic composites able to be used as oil spill cleanup tools. In the best case, 1 g of the composite was able to remove 11 g of the petroleum from the water. This result is interesting since PBS is a

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Instituto Nacional de Metrologia Normalização e Qualidade Industrial (Inmetro) for the transmission electron microscope (FEI-Tecnai Spirit 12), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq 474940/2012-8, 550030/2013-1, and 301461/2015-5), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP PRESAL Ref. 1889/10), Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (SAXS1-20160027) and Fundação Carlos Chagas

Declarations of interest

None.

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