Development and Water Tank Tests of Sugi Bark Sorbent (SBS)

Abstract

Development of the oil sorbent (oil adsorption material) made of organic waste material were initiated in order to provide the resources for marine oil spill response with less environmental load and cost. After some screening, it was found that the fiber of Sugi (Cryptomeria japonica D. Don) bark has potential to be excellent oil sorbent because of its hydrophobic and oleophilic character. As this bark fiber Sugi bark sorbent (SBS) can be used with enclosing cotton sheet, the products consist of completely organic materials. When the bark fibers were dried of larger size, SBS had increased absorbency. SBS performed equivalent absorbency (picking up at most 13.4 times their own weight in bunker A) as conventional polypropylene sorbent in laboratory experiments. Experiments conducted in water tanks confirmed that some shape of SBSs such as S25, S50, B6S14 and M50 could successfully work for recovering oil in small wave and current, which would be expected as production models. After all, S50 and M50 were improved into commercial products, which started to be released in 2001 at Japan.