AN ABSORVENT AND A METHOD OF ITS MANUFACTURE

摘要

New absorbents comprise sulphite pulp fibres (esp. the fine reject fraction) dried by rapid forced heating. The fibres are pref. coated with wax. The absorbents are esp. useful for cleaning up oil spills on water and beaches. They rapidly absorb large amts. of oil (including heavy oils) in the form of a non-sticky cake which can be readily collected. The fibres are pref. dried by injecting the pulp into a hot air stream as it passes from an oil-fired furnace to a rotary drying chamber. A fan at the outlet end of the chamber extracts the suspension of fibres in air and injects it into a system of cyclone separators. The wax coating can be applied by injecting a mist of wax soln. into the cyclone separators or into the conduit leading to the separators. The drying temp. is pref. 300-1000 deg.C. The wax pref. has a m.pt. of 53 deg.C and is applied as a soln. in a volatile solvent (e.g. petroleum ether).