Synthesis of acrylate copolymer‐based super oil adsorption resins and their performances

Abstract In this paper, an acrylate copolymer‐based oil adsorption resin was designed and synthesized by a suspension polymerization with octadecyl acrylate (SA) and butyl acrylate (BA) as monomers, divinylbenzene (DVB) as a cross‐linking agent, and toluene as a pore‐forming agent. By studying the synthesis conditions, the copolymer “SA‐BA‐DVB” (PSBA) with the best adsorption capacity was obtained, when the molar ratio between SA and BA was about 0.9, the content of the DVB and PVA 1788 was about 0.107 wt% and 1.0 wt%, respectively, accounting for the total mass amount of the monomers. Furthermore, by introducing 2% reactive silica nanoparticles (R‐SiO 2 ), the performances of the PSBA were improved due to its increased hydrophobicity and activity space. The equilibrium adsorption capacity of the resulted R‐SiO 2 /PSBA to kerosene, diesel oil, benzene, and p‐xylene was 31.90, 34.13, 39.44, and 41.81 mL/g, respectively, which is about 1.12 to 1.21 times higher than that of the PSBA. Also, the R‐SiO 2 /PSBA show brilliant oil retention rate of about 99% after centrifugation at 3000 rpm for 5 min and recycling ability which can be reusable for at least 10 absorption‐desorption cycles without capacity change, demonstrating that the obtained R‐SiO 2 /PSBA resin can be used as oil removing agents in the field of oil spill applications. Highlights R‐SiO 2 modified acrylate copolymer as an oil adsorption resin was designed and synthesized. The influence of the monomers, cross‐linking agent, and others on the adsorption resin was systematically studied. The adsorption kinetics and performances of the adsorption resin were studied.