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Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of subnanometer inorganic layers on natural cotton to enhance oil sorption performance in marine environments

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Abstract

More than 1 million tons of oil is inadvertently spilled each year. The economic and environmental costs of these spills are enormous and compel further development of environmentally friendly sorbent materials. Here, we demonstrate a vapor-phase modification approach to create a new class of oil sorbents composed of cellulosic materials (cotton) coated with a subnanometer layer of inorganic oxide. This new cellulosic sorbent remains buoyant in water indefinitely and achieves a selective oil sorption capacity (23 g/g or 1.05 g/cm3) that is at least 35 times better than untreated cellulose in aqueous environments. This new sorbent particularly excels under “realistic” conditions such as continuous agitation (e.g., simulated waves) and presoaking in water (e.g., rain or forced immersion). When sorption performance is compared on a per-volume basis—which better captures use conditions than a per-mass basis—this modified natural product becomes comparable to the best sorbents reported in the literature.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Alexandre Magasinski for performing BET measurements. Acknowledgment is made to the donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research—Grant # 55526-DNI10. Additional support for this work came from the Georgia Tech President’s Undergraduate Research Awards (PURA) and the Roxanne D. Westendorf Undergraduate Research Fund. A portion of this research was conducted in Georgia Tech’s Materials Innovation & Learning Laboratory (The MILL), an uncommon “make and measure” space committed to elevating undergraduate research in materials science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, 30332, USA

    Andrew E. Short, Srikar V. Pamidi, Zachary E. Bloomberg, Yi Li & Mark D. Losego

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  1. Andrew E. Short
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  2. Srikar V. Pamidi
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  3. Zachary E. Bloomberg
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Correspondence to Mark D. Losego.

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Short, A.E., Pamidi, S.V., Bloomberg, Z.E. et al. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of subnanometer inorganic layers on natural cotton to enhance oil sorption performance in marine environments. Journal of Materials Research 34, 563–570 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2018.441

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