期刊名称：Lecture Notes in Engineering and Computer Science
印刷版ISSN：2078-0958
电子版ISSN：2078-0966
出版年度：2018
卷号：2237&2238
页码：708-711
出版社：Newswood and International Association of Engineers
摘要：The overall aim of this project is to develop a
recyclable polymer aerogel for an effective utilization of plastic
waste and to use it for oil clean up from wastewater. The waste
utilization from one source (plastic waste) to reduce waste
from another source (oil clean up from wastewater) will take
the world one step closer to the sustainability.
A huge proportion of municipal solid waste accumulated all
over the globe is composed of plastic wastes and a large volume
of it is either incinerated, disposed of into landfill or leaked
into the ocean. The plastic leakage into the seawater has
created further problems as around 13m tonnes of plastic is
ingested by seabirds and fish. In addition, it is estimated that
20,000 plastic bottles are produced per second and less than
10% of them are recycled. With this rate, it is projected that if
proper recycling measures are not taken then by 2050 ocean
will contain more plastic by weight than fish. In this work, we
have provided a sustainable solution to this problem by
utilizing the plastic waste to produce a polymeric aerogel
which is then used for an efficient oil clean-up from
wastewater. To achieve this goal, different grades of plastic
wastes have undergone solvent blending using shear mixing
and solvent extraction using lyophilization to form polymer
aerogel. Unlike traditional methods in which either virgin
polymer is used to synthesize aerogels or high carbon number
and high boiling point solvent is used to synthesize polymer
films, our research has used plastic wastes as a precursor to
produce polymeric aerogels in combination with a low carbon
number, lower boiling point, and low freezing point solvent. It
is anticipated that it will lead to open up a new direction of
using plastic waste as a highly efficient oil-sorbent aerogel. As
this is an ongoing project, we expect to provide more results
before the start of July 2018.
关键词：Plastic wastes; lyophilization; aerogel; and oil
sorbent
