Preparation and oil adsorption performance of cattail fiber wadding

Abstract

To study the adsorption to pure oil and oil-water mixture, cattail fiber waddings with different fibers, wadding structures, blending ratios were prepared. Oil absorbencies in the pure oils and oil-water mixtures were tested and evaluated. The analysis showed that cattail fiber waddings have better adsorption performance to pure oil and oil-water mixture, which is higher than 20 g/g. The retention rate of pure oil is higher than 90%, while retention rate of oil-water mixture decreases to 68%. With the increase of wadding thickness and cattail ratio, the oil adsorption and retention of composite waddings are heightened. The oil-retention declines with the blending of polypropylene (PP) fiber. The oil adsorption of kapok fiber is better than that of cattail fiber and PP fiber. Therefore, oil adsorption performance is improved through adjusting the fiber ratio and porous structure.

Keywords

• cattail fiber
• composite flocs
• oil adsorption
• structural properties
• oil-water separation