Processing of Kapok Fiber into Biodegradable Pellets for Efficient Oil Absorption

As industrializations are being expanded rapidly, environmental concerns are
highlighted often through various media, especially water pollution. There many
causes for water pollution but the significant cause is oil spill. Source of oil spill varies
depends on the situation. In this project, source of oil spill been narrowed down to road
tanker accident while transporting crude oil, crude palm oil and lubricants that
possesses threat to the fresh water supply. The constraints in the current oil spill
cleanup method have led to the recent interest in developing alternative cleanup
method. Besides that, raw kapok as oil sorbent are difficult to apply, store and handle.
In this particular project, the interests focus on Kapok fiber due to its hydrophobic and
oleophilic characteristics. The main goal of this project are to characterize the
physiochemical properties of raw kapok and formation of pellet, to investigate and
compare the water sorption capacity, oil retention capacity and oil sorption capacity of
raw kapok and pelletized kapok and to investigate the selectivity of raw kapok and
kapok pellet for oil and water mixture.