Advancing hyper-crosslinked materials with high efficiency and reusability for oil spill response.

Developing materials with high efficiency for recovering oil to mitigate the environmental impact of oil spills has always been a challenging task. A commercial melamine formaldehyde sponge was coated with an optimised superhydrophobic/superoleophilic hyper-crosslinked polymer and applied to the removal of crude oil from oil-in-water emulsions for the improvement of oil spill clean-up processes. The high surface area, porosity, hydrophobicity, and selectivity of oil over water made the hyper-crosslinked polymer coated sponge (HPCS) an ideal sorbent for efficient oil/water separation.

Mid-Infrared Spectroscopic Method for the Identification and Quantification of Dissolved Oil Components in Marine Environments.

The use of mid-infrared sensors based on conventional spectroscopic equipment for oil spill monitoring and fingerprinting in aqueous systems has to date been mainly confined to laboratory environments. This paper presents a portable-based mid-infrared attenuated total reflectance (MIR-ATR) sensor system that was used to quantify a number of environmentally relevant hydrocarbon contaminants in marine water. The sensor comprises a polymer-coated diamond waveguide in combination with a room-temperature operated pyroelectric detector, and the analytical performance was optimized by evaluating the influence of polymer composition, polymer film thickness, and solution flow rate on the sensor response.

Using plasticizers to control the hydrocarbon selectivity of a poly(methyl methacrylate)-coated quartz crystal microbalance sensor.

Chemical sensors based on a polymer coated quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) generally present poor molecular selectivity for compounds that contain similar functional groups and possess the same chemical properties. This paper shows for the first time that the selectivity and sensitivity of a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) based QCM sensor can be significantly enhanced for aromatic hydrocarbons by incorporating a plasticizer into the polymer film. The sensor was fabricated by spin coating PMMA onto a quartz crystal, and the influence of plasticizer type and amount on the response was evaluated.

The impact of water and hydrocarbon concentration on the sensitivity of a polymer-based quartz crystal microbalance sensor for organic compounds.

Long-term environmental monitoring of organic compounds in natural waters requires sensors that respond reproducibly and linearly over a wide concentration range, and do not degrade with time. Although polymer coated piezoelectric based sensors have been widely used to detect hydrocarbons in aqueous solution, very little information exists regarding their stability and suitability over extended periods in water. In this investigation, the influence of water aging on the response of various polymer membranes [polybutadiene (PB), polyisobutylene (PIB), polystyrene (PS), polystyrene-co-butadiene (PSB)] was studied using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM).

Revealing the properties of oils from their dissolved hydrocarbon compounds in water with an integrated sensor array system.

This paper presents a system and method developed to identify a source oil's characteristic properties by testing the oil's dissolved components in water. Through close examination of the oil dissolution process in water, we hypothesise that when oil is in contact with water, the resulting oil-water extract, a complex hydrocarbon mixture, carries the signature property information of the parent oil. If the dominating differences in compositions between such extracts of different oils can be identified, this information could guide the selection of various sensors, capable of capturing such chemical variations.