The Modified Polyurethane Foam Using as Sorbents for the Oil Sorbency

A comparative study of oil sorbency using modified polyurethane foam as sorbents is performed where Polyurethane type polyester was prepared locally. The objective of the study was to compare the oil spill removal capability of the pure and modified polyurethane where this modification was done by adding both sisal fibers and rice hulls (600 m size) as reinforcing fillers to the polyurethane matrix. The study also examined the effect of pin holes density. All Experiments were performed on a beaker scale. The obtained results showed the increase in sorption efficiency with the increase of the immersion time according to the difference in the capillary structure of both pure and modified polyurethane. Pin holes have a high effect on the sorption efficiency with a saturation sorption efficiency for each case of pin hole numbers. At small number of pin holes the saturation values is 86.58 while at high pin holes number the saturation value is 448.32. We also have an exponential increment of sorption efficiency with the increase of pin holes which is an indication of high loading capacity according to the transition of surface sorption to three dimensional one.