Review on the Oil Adsorption Mechanism of Hair Keratin for Oil Spill Recovery

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-958-2_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

oil spill pollution; hair oil absorption; superhydrophobic

Abstract

With the increasing frequency of offshore oil exploration and transportation, oil spill accidents pose a continuous threat to the ecological environment and economic development. The development of efficient, environmentally friendly, and low-cost oil-absorbing materials has become a research priority in this field. This paper reviews a natural oil sorbent material based on the characteristics of hair keratin. Inspired by the practical use of hair in cleaning up the Peru oil spill, this study delves into the theoretical mechanism of hair’s oil adsorption, identifying its surface lipid layer, the non-polar nature of keratin molecules, and their multi-level structure as the key factors contributing to its excellent lipophilic and hydrophobic properties. Through experiments, a superhydrophobic-modified hair sponge sample was prepared, and its adsorption performance for various oils (such as diesel, lubricating oil, and vegetable oil) was systematically measured, with an average adsorption capacity of 8.3 and a maximum of 104.2 g/g. The research demonstrates that hair, as a naturally abundant and low-cost material, holds significant application potential and environmental value in the field of marine oil spill remediation.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jintao Ye
AU  - Xiangzhu Chen
AU  - Jiacheng Chen
AU  - Menghuang Qi
AU  - Kaiye Chen
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/26
TI  - Review on the Oil Adsorption Mechanism of Hair Keratin for Oil Spill Recovery
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Management Science and Software Engineering (ICMSSE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 179
EP  - 185
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-958-2_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-958-2_21
ID  - Ye2025
ER  -