Development of polymeric aerogel using plastic wastes for oil cleanup from wastewater

The overall aim of this project is to develop a recyclable polymer aerogel for an effective utilization of plastic waste and to use it for oil clean up from wastewater. The waste utilization from one source (plastic waste) to reduce waste from another source (oil clean up from wastewater) will take the world one step closer to the sustainability. A huge proportion of municipal solid waste accumulated all over the globe is composed of plastic wastes and a large volume of it is either incinerated, disposed of into landfill or leaked into the ocean. The plastic leakage into the seawater has created further problems as around 13m tonnes of plastic is ingested by seabirds and fish. In addition, it is estimated that 20,000 plastic bottles are produced per second and less than 10% of them are recycled. With this rate, it is projected that if proper recycling measures are not taken then by 2050 ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish. In this work, we have provided a sustainable solution to this problem by utilizing the plastic waste to produce a polymeric aerogel which is then used for an efficient oil clean-up from wastewater. To achieve this goal, different grades of plastic wastes have undergone solvent blending using shear mixing and solvent extraction using lyophilization to form polymer aerogel. Unlike traditional methods in which either virgin polymer is used to synthesize aerogels or high carbon number and high boiling point solvent is used to synthesize polymer films, our research has used plastic wastes as a precursor to produce polymeric aerogels in combination with a low carbon number, lower boiling point, and low freezing point solvent. It is anticipated that it will lead to open up a new direction of using plastic waste as a highly efficient oil-sorbent aerogel. As this is an ongoing project, we expect to provide more results before the start of July 2018.