Pune's DIAT develops fabric from waste silk to clean oil spill

Pune's DIAT develops fabric from waste silk to clean oil spill Pune, Nov 29 (PT) Researchers from the city-based Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) claimed to have developed an environment-friendly fabric from waste silk that can be used for cleaning oceanic water during oil-spills and for treating contaminated water. According to the researchers, the fabric acts like a sponge and soaks up oil from water.

This "superhydrophobic-superoleophobic", biodegradable fabric has been developed using waste silk samples procured from silk handloom weavers from Yeola in Nashik district of Maharashtra, they said. "The contaminated oily wastewater originating from industries, and frequent oil-spill accidents happening in oceans during transportation of petroleum oils, can be easily cleaned by the superhydrophobic waste silk fabric," said Prof Balasubramanian K, Head of the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, DIAT.

It was under Balasubramanian's guidance, researchers from DIAT (a deemed university), and the Institutefor Frontier Materials Deakin University, Australia, developed the fabric. It can separate oil-water mixture with more 95 per cent separation efficiency till 30 repeated cycles, Balasubramanian said.

"It easily biodegrades in an environment under a decompost solution, at normal temperature, without creating any further waste, and thereby mitigating its disposal problem, unlike synthetic plastic, metallic or ceramic materials," he said. Prakash Gore, a PhD research scholar, said the initial lab trials were performed with various raw silk fibre grades procured from silk-producing farmers from Chakan in Pune, and various woven and non-woven silk waste samples procured from silk handloom weavers from Yeola in Nashik.

"These waste silk samples were then chemically treated with the synthesized non-wetting dispersion solution at the laboratory to develop the fabric," he said. He added that this superhydrophobic fabric is "cheaper in cost, mechanically durable and readily biodegrades under environmental conditions after its service life".

"This fabric is suitable for small and large scale industries working in the treatment of contaminated water and for sustainable environmental applications, like cleaning of oily oceanic water during oil-spill accidents," he said. Superhydrophobic effect is a state wherein the surface of the material is extremely repellent to water, like a lotus leaf, while superoleophilicity is a state wherein an oil or solvent instantly wets the surface of the material.

According to the researchers, the fabric is being secured for intellectual property rights, and is under the patenting process through the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)..

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