Abstract

Among the contaminants plaguing our waters today, oil remains one of the most pervasive and challenging contaminant to remove. Oil pollution occurs not only through factory discharge, but also by accident spills from the fuel of the vehicle or the transportation of oil. Sugarcane bagasse (SB) is an abundant agricultural by-product containing almost half of cellulose and one quarter of lignin. After chemical treatments SB can be modified their hydrophobicity leading to improve its oil adsorptive properties. In a column experiment containing 1 g of SB, oil was able to be adsorbed from oil and water mixture by, from the highest to the lowest uptake, AASB, ASSB, NSB, SSB and BSB with the average oil adsorption capacity of 13.0 mL/g, 11.25 mL/g, 10.50 mL/g, 9.0 mL/g and 8.75 mL/g respectively. The results were concurrently meeting the result of material characterisation using FTIR, where acetic acid treated SB (AASB) consists of high lignin leading to high hydrophobicity. On the other hand, BSB showed the lowest oil adsorption capacity and more hydrophilic due to the lowest amount of lignin present in SB. The result showed a potential use of natural material of SBs with high lignin content to tackle oil spill in water environment.

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