Production of oleophilic sorbent and studying its oil absorption properties

In recent years, in the sphere of water purification, there has been successfully developed the direction of producing effective sorbents of petroleum products associated with altering the nature of their surface with compounds of various classes. An effective method is the hydrophobization process involving a special processing of materials by immersion in solutions or melts of water repellents, spraying them on the surface, etc. As water repellents, there are used silicon organic compounds, paraffin, monoalkyl ethers of polyethylene glycol, high molecular weight compounds, etc. The hydrophobizer itself must have good adhesion to the material and, being evenly distributed during the processing, it can form bonds with the surface, which will allow it not to be washed out and not to dissolve further during operation. However, hydrophobization has some disadvantages, such as the complexity of obtaining a modified surface which would be resistant to leaching, a considerable material consumption, a high cost, etc. In this work, we have investigated the possibilities of hydrophobization of expanded perlite with quaternary ammonium salts in order to reduce its water absorption. The optimal parameters of the hydrophobization process have been established. It is shown that among the used ammonium modifiers, the greatest beneficial effect is observed for catamine AB-18: under static conditions, the sorption capacity of expanded perlite samples modified with its 1 % solution is 2-3.5 times higher than the corresponding indicator of the original.