Abstract
We began to develop the oil sorbent made of organic waste material in order to provide the resources for marine oil spill response with less environmental load and cost. After some screening, it was found that the fiber of Sugi (Cryptomeria japonica D.Don) bark has potential to be excellent oil sorbent because of its hydrophobic and oleophilic character. As bark fiber can be used with enclosing cotton sheet, the products consist of completely organic materials. When the bark fibers of SBS were in drier condition and their size were larger, SBS performed better absorbency. SBS performed equivalent absorbency (picking up at most 13.4 times their own weight in bunker A) as conventional polypropylene sorbent in laboratory experiment. In water tank experiments, we also confirmed that some shape of SBSs such as S25, S50, B6S14 and M50 could successfully work for recovering oil in small wave and current, which would be expected as production models.
