MELT BLOWING PROCESS CONDITIONS FOR NANOFIBERS OF POLYMERS FOR OIL-WATER SEPARATION IN MARINE OIL SPILLS CLEAN-UP APPLICATIONS: A SHORT REVIEW
Author(s):
Zykamilia Kamin1,2,3*, Rosalam Sarbatly2,3, Duduku Krishnaiah2, Akihiko Tanioka4 and Mitsuhiro Takahashi5
Affiliation(s):
1Energy Research Unit
2Membrane Research Group
3Nanofiber Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
4Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan
5Zetta Ltd. #102, 2-10-1, Kamata, Ota- ku, Tokyo, 144-0052 Japan
*Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The development of oil and gas industries has resulted in environmental issues, such as oil pollution. Oil pollution in a marine environment, poses significant threats to not only coastal marine life, but also to the social economic activities of community living in the nearby areas. The spreading of the oil could be controlled efficiently using sorbents such as nanofiber, due to its high specific surface area, high porosity, small diameter, and small pore sizes properties. Common approach to produce nanofiber is by using electrospinning technique however, this technique has low productivity and requires a post treatment for solvent removal. However, a melt blowing technique is an alternative to electrospinning as it is highly productive and does not require any solvent. The mass production of nanofiber fulfils the demand of the material during an oil spill clean-up operation. Therefore, this review discusses the influence of melt blowing process conditions such as die, polymer, air and collector, on the properties of nanofiber targeted for oil-water separation for the application of oil spill clean-up.