Urethane Modified Hydrophobic Compact Wood Pulp Paper for Oil Spill Cleanup: A Preliminary Study

Oil spills and oil/water wastewater are among the great concerns regarding oil pollution. Existing technologies face many limitations and in some cases are responsible for causing secondary pollution, therefore there is as seek for environmental friendly solutions. Biomass, from which celluloses are highlighted, are being employed for oil/water separation or oil absorbents membranes. Usually, these membranes are obtained by freeze drying of CNF (cellulose nanofibrils) suspensions followed by chemical modification for hydrophobization, which involves expensive process as chemical vapor deposition and expensive reactants as sylanes, turning these processes hardly scalable. Here, we produced a natural porous structure paper from eucalyptus pulp fibers modified by a dipping and heating process in a blocked diisocyanate solution. After the surface treatment, contact angle with water reached 144 degrees and water absorption reduced seven times, keeping the good oil absorbance. The chemical modification process is simple to be performed and use a very low quantity of reactant estimated to be less than 0.1 wt% based on cellulose. The good mechanical properties of the material allows its use in non usual conditions which can be of great importance depending on the environmental conditions.