Chemically modified sago waste for oil spill removal

Oil spills is a major concern as many aspects have to be taken for consideration to clean up these spills such as equipments, responding teams, environmental considerations and budget. The aim of this project is to chemically modify sago waste which is abundant, low cost, biodegradable and environmental friendly. Sago wastes structure mainly comprise of starch, cellulose and lignin which consist of various hydroxyl group as a hydrophilic group. In this study. long hydrophobic backbones were produced by reaction of sago waste in 1: 1 w/w ratio (sago waste: stearic acid) and 1:2 w/w ratio (sago waste: stearic acid) with stearic acid via ester linkage to replace the hydrophilic groups and increasing the level of hydrophobicities. 3 types of absorption systems were applied namely dry system, wet system (static) and wet system (dynamic) to measure the effectiveness of sago waste and modified sago waste 1 in absorbing oil. As for modified sago waste 2, only wet system (dynamic) was being applied. Modified sago waste I and modified sago waste 2 showed a more effective site in absorbing oil in wet dynamic system where the condition is similar to the real one. It is suggested that modiiied sago waste would be an effective environmental friendly sorbent for oil spill removal