Acetylation of banana fibre to improve oil absorbency

Oil spill leaves detrimental effects on the environment, living organisms and economy. In the present work, an attempt is made to provide an efficient, easily deployable method of cleaning up oil spills and recovering of the oil. The work reports the use of banana fibres which were acetylated for oil spill recovery. The product so formed was characterized by FT-IR, TG, SEM and its degree of acetylation was also evaluated. The extent of acetylation was measured by weight percent gain. The oil sorption capacity of the acetylated fibre was higher than that of the commercial synthetic oil sorbents such as polypropylene fibres as well as un-modified fibre. Therefore, these oil sorption-active materials which are also biodegradable can be used to substitute non-biodegradable synthetic materials in oil spill cleanup.