Removal of Non-Aqueous-Phase Liquid (NAPL) Pollutants from Seawater Using Human Hair as a Sustainable Biosorbent

Oil spills are regarded as one of the worst disasters to ever affect the marine environment, therefore, cleanup is required. Human hair has been reported as petroleum sorbent and attempts have been made to evaluate its potential for higher added applications. This paper investigates the use of waste human hair as a low-cost, organic sorbent for oil spill cleanup, aiming to replace synthetic adsorbents.. Using motor oil and diesel as the sorbate, human hair was employed as a biosorbent material, and its property was examined. Using 1 g of hair for 20 ml of oil showed that intact hair had higher and faster-stabilizing sorption efficiency than fiber hair for both lubricating oil and diesel. As human hair effectively sorbed lubricating oil and diesel quickly, reaching near-maximum efficiency upon contact, using 1 g of hair with immediate removal was preferable for saving time and reducing environmental exposure to spilled oil. For 20 ml of oil in a 250 ml glass beaker, The sorption efficiency of both intact and fiber hair increased with higher weights, reaching 95% and 85% for lubricating oil and 80% and 40% for diesel at 1.5 grams, respectively. As oil volume increased, the sorption efficiency of intact hair for lubricating oil dropped from 95% at 20 ml to 65% at 80 ml, while fiber hair showed a smaller decline from 85% to 77.61%; for diesel, intact hair decreased from 45% to 11.25%, and fiber hair from 25% to 16.65%.Fiber hair, with its intact structure, proved more efficient for oil absorption than powdered hair, requiring less material to form sludge.