COTTON – GRAPHENE BASED NANO-COMPOSITES AS A SEMI-SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL FOR OIL AND CHEMICAL CLEANUP
Abstract
The world is facing severe ecological and environmental problems due to the oil
spills and the discharge of organic solvents into the environment. This problem has led to
development of different tools and high performance materials that can both effectively
and efficiently absorb these discharges from water bodies. Moreover, greener and
economical methods to produce these materials are on high demand. Herein, we
demonstrate a novel method of attaching graphene to functionalized cotton cellulose. The
hydrophobic graphene coated cellulose with a contact angle of 144.76 o (with water) shows
great oil absorption with a contact angle less than 10o towards oil and non-polar organic
solvents. The absorption experiments performed exhibited an absorption capacity of
28.32, 39.91, 42.32, 40.89, 22.1, 27.67, 34.69 and 39.01 for dodecane, paraffin oil, pump
oil, mineral oil, hexane, toluene and crude oil respectively. In addition, the graphene
coated cellulose revealed excellent reusability, great selectivity and a high capacity. By
the combination of cost effective combination, eco-friendly nature and excellent oil
absorption performance, the graphene coated cotton is a promising candidate with a strong
potential for large scale removal of oils from water and their environmental remediation.
Subject
DMFN, N
Dimethylformamide SOCl2
Thionyl chloride HCl
Hydrochloric acid SO2
Sulphur dioxide ATR
Attenuated Total Reflection FTIR
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy SEM
Scanning electron microscope CA
Contact Angle
Citation
Panduranga, Kishan (2018). COTTON – GRAPHENE BASED NANO-COMPOSITES AS A SEMI-SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL FOR OIL AND CHEMICAL CLEANUP. Master's thesis, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /174123.