Synthesis of acrylate copolymer-based super oil adsorption resins and their performances

In this paper, an acrylate copolymer-based oil adsorption resin was designed and synthesized by a suspension polymerization with octadecyl acrylate (SA) and butyl acrylate (BA) as monomers, divinylbenzene (DVB) as a cross-linking agent, and toluene as a pore-forming agent. By studying the synthesis conditions, the copolymer “SA-BA-DVB” (PSBA) with the best adsorption capacity was obtained, when the molar ratio between SA and BA was about 0.9, the content of the DVB and PVA 1788 was about 0.107 wt% and 1.0 wt%, respectively, accounting for the total mass amount of the monomers. Furthermore, by introducing 2% reactive silica nanoparticles (R-SiO 2 ), the performances of the PSBA were improved due to its increased hydrophobicity and activity space. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of the resulted R-SiO 2 /PSBA to kerosene, diesel oil, benzene, and p-xylene was 31.90, 34.13, 39.44, and 41.81 mL/g, respectively, which is about 1.12 to 1.21 times higher than that of the PSBA. Also, the R-SiO 2 /PSBA show brilliant oil retention rate of about 99% after centrifugation at 3000 rpm for 5 min and recycling ability which can be reusable for at least 10 absorption-desorption cycles without capacity change, demonstrating that the obtained R-SiO 2 /PSBA resin can be used as oil removing agents in the field of oil spill applications. Highlights R-SiO 2 modified acrylate copolymer as an oil adsorption resin was designed and synthesized. The influence of the monomers, cross-linking agent, and others on the adsorption resin was systematically studied. The adsorption kinetics and performances of the adsorption resin were studied.