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Use of cork granules as an effective sustainable material to clean-up spills of crude oil and derivatives

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A Correction to this article was published on 19 December 2019

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Abstract

The use of cork granules for cleaning up crude oil or oil derivative spills and further oil recovery appears as a promising option due to their unique properties, which allow a high oil sorption capacity, low water pickup and excellent reuse. The present work reports the effect of oil viscosity on cork sorption capacity by using five types of oils (lubricating oil, 5.7 goil gcork−1; heavy oil, 4.2 goil gcork−1; light oil, 3.0 goil gcork−1; biodiesel, 2.6 goil gcork−1; and diesel, 2.0 goil gcork−1). The cork sorption capacity for light petroleum was also evaluated as a function of temperature and sorbent particle size. Additionally, improvements on oil recovery from cork sorbents by a mechanical compression process have been achieved as a result of a design of experiments (DOE) using the response surface methodology. Such statistical technique provided remarkable results in terms of cork sorbent reusability, as the oil sorption capacity was preserved after 30 cycles of sorption-squeezing steps. The sorbed oils could be removed from the sorbent surface, collected simply by squeezing the cork granules and further reused. The best operational region yielded near 80% oil recovery, using a cork mass of 8.85 g (particle size of 2.0–4.0 mm) loaded with 43.5 mL of lubricating oil, at 5.4 bar, utilising two compressions with a duration of 2 min each.

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Change history

  • 19 December 2019

    The original publication of this paper contains a mistake.

Abbreviations

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

F calc :

F value calculated

F tab :

F value tabulated

R 2 :

Coefficient of determination

RGC:

Regranulated cork

CCD:

Central composite design

DOE:

Design of experiments

SEM:

Scanning electron microscopy

TGA:

Thermogravimetric analysis

DrTGA:

Differential thermal analysis

RSM:

Response surface methodology

FTIR:

Fourier transform infrared

α :

Significance level

n :

Number of experiments

k :

Factors

m c :

Mass of cork (g)

m oc :

Mass of cork impregnated with oil (g)

m ocd :

Mass of cork impregnated with oil after compression (g)

m o :

Mass of oil (g)

N c :

Number of compressions

q Sat :

Amount of sorbed oil per mass of cork particles during the saturations step (goil gparticles−1)

q comp :

Amount of desorbed oil per mass of cork particles for each compression cycles (goil gparticles−1)

R (%):

Oil recovery percentage

t c :

Compression time (min)

t w :

Waiting time (min)

P :

Pressure (bar)

A, B, C, D :

Independent variables or factors (coded as pressure, cork mass, number of compressions and compressing time, respectively).

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Funding

This work was financially supported by Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM-UID/EQU/50020/2019-funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC). Vítor J.P. Vilar acknowledges the FCT Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus 2017 (CEECIND/01317/2017) and the Special Visiting Researcher Program PVE (CAPES Project No. A069/2013). F.V Hackbarth acknowledges her postdoctoral fellowship provided by CAPES PNPD, and the postgraduate programme in chemical engineering of the Federal University of Santa Catarina. D. Todescato acknowledges his Doctoral fellowship provided by CNPq, CAPES (BEX 99999.007222/2015-07) and ANP-PRH09. This work was developed in the scope of the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007679 (ref. FCT UID/CTM/50011/2013), funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and by national funds through FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. P. J. Carvalho acknowledges FCT for a contract under the Investigador FCT 2015, Contract IF/00758/2015.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering-Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials (LSRE-LCM), Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Diego Todescato, Rui A.R. Boaventura & Vítor J. P. Vilar

  2. Laboratory of Mass Transfer, Federal University of Santa Catarina, PO Box 476, Florianópolis, SC, CEP 88040-900, Brazil

    Diego Todescato, Fabíola V. Hackbarth, Antônio A. Ulson de Souza & Selene M. A. G. Ulson de Souza

  3. CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Pedro J. Carvalho

  4. Departamento de Engenharias, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Campus Blumenau, Blumenau, SC, Brazil

    Miguel A. Granato

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  1. Diego Todescato
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  2. Fabíola V. Hackbarth
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  3. Pedro J. Carvalho
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  8. Vítor J. P. Vilar
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Correspondence to Vítor J. P. Vilar.

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Todescato, D., Hackbarth, F.V., Carvalho, P.J. et al. Use of cork granules as an effective sustainable material to clean-up spills of crude oil and derivatives. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 366–378 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-06743-1

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