Environmentally friendly carbon granule sorbent and method of manufacture thereof
Andrejs Šiškins, Nikolajs Toropovs, Aleksandrs Korjakins, Jurijs Ozoliņš

The invention pertains to sorbents for oil spill response. The offered manufacturing process of granular porous carbon sorbent consists of the following sequential steps: obtaining of viscous mass of sapropel suspension and peat; adding a dry mix (peat, fine peat wastes, ferromagnetic particles, optionally microspheres) to the obtained viscous mass and mixing all the components until a homogeneous mass is obtained; formation of granules with a diameter of 2 to 20 mm; drying and pyrolysis of obtained granules at the temperature of 400 to 800 °C. As a result the carbon granules with a large specific surface area, low density and porosity gradients are obtained. Sorbent has hydrophobic properties without any additional treatment. Due to increased buoyancy and hydrophobicity the proposed sorbent can be used for clean up of the water surface from oil pollution, particularly from thin (thickness of 0,5 to 3,0 mm) layer of oil, as well as from thicker layers. It can be used both as a bulk material scattered on the surface of the water and as the filler of floating structures, such as protective floating booms, as well as water treatment cartridge filters filled with granular sorbent. In the composition of sorbent the ferromagnetic particles and closed cell microspheres are included that determines good buoyancy and allows to use electromagnetic collectors for collecting sorbent.



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