Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

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Industrial Crops and Products

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop

Theoretical and experimental study on the oil sorption behavior of

kapok assemblies
Ting Dong a , Fumei Wang a,b , Guangbiao Xu a,b,
a
b

College of Textiles, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China

Key Laboratory of Textile Science and Technology Ministry of Education, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 4 May 2014
Received in revised form 2 July 2014
Accepted 14 July 2014
Keywords:
Kapok assemblies
Dual-scale model
Oil sorption coefcient
Kapok lumen

a b s t r a c t
Kapok ber is a natural hollow ber whose assemblies show high oil sorption capacity for various oils.
In this article, a dual-scale model based on Washburn Capillary Theory was developed to study the oil
sorption behavior of kapok assemblies with relation of their pore structure. The validity of this model
was evaluated by oil sorption coefcient obtained from the curve of oil mass increase versus sorption
time, which was measured by a wicking method. Diesel and motor oil were chosen as experimental oils.
It turned out that theoretical values of sorption coefcients of the two oils were highly consistent with
their experimental results. On the basis of theoretical analysis, we found that the big lumen of kapok ber
contributed considerably to the oil sorption capacity of kapok assembly, which was further enhanced with
increasing kapok packing density. At the tightly packed condition of 0.10 g/cm3 , oil absorbed by kapok
lumens accounted for up to one fth of the total oil absorption of kapok assembly for both test oils.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the expansion of oil exploration and production activities
around the world, water pollution caused by oil spillage has become
one of the major environmental problems. It was estimated that
22,000 tonnes of oil spilled into marine between 2010 and 2013
alone, forming oil lm on the water by 12 square kilometers per
ton (ITOPF, 2013). To remove and recover the spilled oil, mechanical extraction by sorption materials is regarded as one of the most
desirable choices, as they can concentrate and transform liquid oil
to semi solid or solid phase, which can then be removed from the
water and handed in a convenient manner (Karan et al., 2011).
A large volume of published studies have reported oil removal
and collection by sorption materials. These materials are generally divided into three types: inorganic mineral materials,
synthetic organic materials and natural organic materials. Inorganic mineral sorbents like graphite, perlite, vermiculite, silica,
zeolites and organic clay, are less performed due to their low oil
absorption and inadequate buoyancy. Synthetic organic materials,
primarily polypropylene, show high oil sorption capacity but are

Corresponding author. Present address: College of Textiles, Donghua University,

5047 room, 2999 North Renmin Road, Songjiang district, Shanghai 201620, China.
Tel.: +86 021 67792803.
E-mail address: guangbiao xu@dhu.edu.cn (G. Xu).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2014.07.020
0926-6690/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

non-biodegradability (Wahi et al., 2013). Natural organic sorbents

including straw, sawdust, rice husks, bagasse, cotton, wool, kenaf,
cattail, milkwood, kapok ber, silk-oss ber and populus seed
ber receive increasing attention for their highly biodegradability
and low cost. It has been observed that straw, sawdust, rice husks
and coconut husk suffer drawbacks in terms of high water uptake
and relatively low oil absorbency (Ali et al., 2012; Annunciado et al.,
2005; Husseien et al., 2008). While cotton, milkwood, silk-oss
ber, cattail, kapok ber and populus seed ber can absorb signicantly more oil than synthetic organic materials (Annunciado
et al., 2005; Choi, 1996; Choi and Moreau, 1993; Rengasamy et al.,
2011; Singh et al., 2013). Among these natural oil sorbents, kapok
bber is a natural hollow ber extracted from the seedpod of
kapok tree. It has a big cylindrical lumen and very thin cell wall
which mainly consists of cellulose, lignin, polysaccharide and small
amount of waxy coating (Rijavec, 2008).Traditionally, kapok bers
were used as stufng in mattresses, pillows, and upholstered furniture. Machine spinning of kapok was difcult and limited to coarse
yarns only or to the yarns blended with cotton due to its brittleness and poor cohesiveness. In recent years, however, kapok
bers gained great academic interests as an oil sorption material
(Abdullah et al., 2010; Hori et al., 2000; Lim and Huang, 2007a,b;
Rahmah and Abdullah, 2011; Rengasamy et al., 2011; Wang et al.,
2012b, 2013). In their studies, kapok bers exhibited good water
repellency with high capability of absorbing various oils, demonstrating great potential for oil pollution control.

326

T. Dong et al. / Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

It has been found that the high capability of oil absorption

of kapok assemblies is attributed to the big lumen of kapok
ber, regardless of the existence of the plant wax coating which
accounts for the hydrophobicity (Rijavec, 2009; Wang et al., 2012a).
However, the oil sorption mechanism, the contribution of hollow
lumens and inter-ber pores to the oil sorption capacity of kapok
assemblies still cannot be well recognized. In the present work, a
dual-scale model was developed to characterize the oil sorption
behavior of kapok assemblies with relation of their pore structure, and a wicking method was carried out to verify the model by
comparing experimental and theoretical oil sorption coefcients.
Conclusions from this research will be helpful in designing the
applicable structure of kapok assemblies for oil sorption purpose.
2. Theoretical section

(1) All kapok bers in the testing container were of the same diameter and length and arranged vertically.
(2) The pores made of kapok lumens were regarded as a series of
parallel capillary tubes with diameters equating to the inner
diameter of kapok ber.
(3) The pores in inter-ber distances with noncircular crosssectional shapes were considered as a series of parallel capillary
tubes with equivalent diameter dened by hydraulic diameter,
which met the following conditions (Mao and Russell, 2008):
a) The wetted area of capillary tube assembly was identical to
the wetted area of inter-ber pores.
b) The porosity of the capillary tube assembly was the same as
that of inter-ber pores.
Based on the assumption (2), we got the following equation:
dhi = di

(1)

where dhi is the equivalent capillary diameter of kapok lumens and

di is the inner diameter of kapok ber.
To calculate the equivalent capillary diameter of inter-ber
pores, we employed  as the packing density of kapok assemblies.
Then the volume of kapok bers Qf and kapok cell walls Qw could
be expressed as follows:

Qf =
f

(2)


w

(3)

where f and w are the density of kapok ber and kapok cell wall,
respectively. Therefore, the total porosity , inter-ber porosity e
and inner-ber porosity i were obtained as follows:
= 1 Qw = 1


w

(4)

e = 1 Qf = 1


f

(5)


i = e = 

1
1

f
w

Sv (1 e ) = dhe n
e =

2 n
dhe

where Sv is the specic surface area of kapok bers, which could

also be expressed as:
Sv =

de
(/4)de2

(6)

4
de

(9)

where de is the external diameter of kapok ber. Combining Eqs.

(7)(9), the hydraulic diameter for inter-ber pores was obtained:
e
de
(1 e )

(10)

According to Washburn equation, the liquid wicking length L

and wicking time t of a capillary tube with diameter of dc have the
following relationship (Washburn, 1921):
L2 =

 cos 
dc t
4

(11)

where  is the liquid surface tension,  is the contact angle between

the liquid and the solid surface,  is the viscosity of the liquid. As
the liquid wicking length could also be expressed in the form of
absorbed liquid mass by:
W = A0 1 L

(12)

where A is the cross-sectional area of lled medium, 0 is the porosity of lled medium, l is the liquid density. Therefore, the mass
increase of oil absorbed by kapok lumens Wi and their inter-ber
pores We were obtained by substituting Eqs. (1), (10) into (11) and
(12), respectively, as follows:
Wi2 = A2 12 2i
We2 = A2 12

l cos 
di t
4

2e
l cos 
de t
(1 e ) 4

(13)
(14)

For the same system (the packing density of kapok assemblies and the type of oil), the ratio between the mass square of
absorbed oil and sorption time is a constant and dened as oil
sorption coefcient (Nishi et al., 2002). In the following section,
comparisons between experimental and theoretical oil sorption
coefcients were carried out to verify the validity of the above
model.
3. Materials and Experiment
3.1. Kapok and oils
The kapok bers used in this study was java kapok got from
Pate County, Java Tengah, Indonesia. The characteristics of the ber
were examined using SEM (TM3000, Hitachi, Japan). Before SEM
observation, kapok bers were immersed in liquid nitrogen and
then fractured to reserve the intact hollow structure of the bers.
As shown in Fig. 1, the ber had a hollow structure with big lumen.
The external diameter, inner diameter and linear density of kapok
were measured according to the methods adopted by Chang (2012).
The densities of kapok ber and kapok cell wall were calculated
according to the following equations:
 2
d
4 e

Ao = di2
4
Af =

(7)
(8)

dhe =

The dual-scale model was developed based on classical capillary

channel theory, in which brous structures were modeled as an
assembly of many cylindrical capillary tubes of equivalent dimensions and liquid transport was driven by the capillary pressure
(Washburn, 1921). For kapok assemblies which include cylindrical lumens and irregular-shaped inter-ber pores, we made the
following assumptions:

Qw =

We used n representing the number of capillary tubes for interber pores and dhe the corresponding hydraulic diameter. Based on
the assumption (3), the following equations were established:

(15)
(16)

T. Dong et al. / Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

327

Fig. 1. SEM image of the cross-section of a kapok ber.

Ndt =

10, 000G
= 10, 000(Af Ao )w
L


f =

(17)

Af Ao w

(18)

Af

where de and di are the average external and inner diameter of

kapok, f is the density of kapok ber, w is the density of kapok
cell wall, Ndt is the linear density of kapok ber, Af and Ao are the
cross-sectional area of kapok and kapok lumen, respectively. All
these basic parameters of kapok ber are presented in Table 1.
Two types of oils, namely diesel and motor oil, were used in
the study. The densities and surface tensions of the oils were measured by the Tensionmeter (DCAT11, Dataphysics, Germany). Their
viscosities were determined by SNB2 Digital Rotary Viscosimeter. For measurement of contact angle between kapok and the
experimental oils, a captive bubble method was adopted by using
optical contact angle meter (OCA15EC, Dataphysics, Germany). In
the testing process, kapok bers were attached to a glass slide by
double-side tape and paved in the form of plane. As shown in Fig. 2,
the captive bubble method was conducted by forming an air bubble
onto the immersed kapok surface in the oil by using a U-shaped
needle. The nal contact angle was an average of three trials. Table 2
summarized the testing results.
3.2. Method of oil sorption experiments
The oil sorption experiments were carried out by wicking
method, performing on DCAT11. The sample tube which held the
kapok bers was 40 mm in length with an internal diameter of
12 mm. The calculated tube volume and cross-sectional area were
4.524 cm3 and 1.131 cm2 , respectively. In the test process, different
quantities of kapok bers were packed evenly into the sample tube
and then compressed by screwing the piston of the tube to a lled
length of 20 mm, producing packing densities ranging from 0.03 to
0.10 g/cm3 . The lled tube was then suspended under the electrobalance through a special sample holder. A transparent glass beaker
with test oil was placed on constant-temperature chamber which
was xed on a lifting platform. The oil temperature was maintained
around 2224 C. When the test started, the test oil held by the
lifting platform automatically moved up until a force change was

Fig. 2. Contact angles between kapok surface and (a) motor oil, (b) diesel measured
by captive bubble method.

registered as a result of initial contact with the sample, and then its
position was xed for the rest of the experiment. The absorbed oil
mass due to capillary action was detected by the electro-balance
and memorizing on a computer with analog-digital converter.
4. Results and discussions
4.1. Oil sorption behavior of different packed kapok assemblies
The sorption curves of motor oil and diesel at different packing densities of kapok assemblies are presented in Fig. 3(a and b).
Each curve is characterized in triplicate and plotted as average of
three trials with error bars indicating one standard deviation. For
two types of experimental oils, the mass square of oils absorbed
by kapok assemblies, m2 , versus sorption time, t, exhibit notably
linear relationship, which are further enhanced with the increase
of kapok packing density. The least linear relationship appeared at
0.03 g/cm3 might be because the large pores within inter-ber distance did not have sufcient capillary pressure to ll themselves
with oil, as evidenced by Jurins equation (Zhu et al., 2008). When
the liquid rises inside a circular pore of radius r, the capillary force
will be balance by the gravitational force and the liquid will ceases
to rise beyond the equilibrium wicking height h*,
h =

2 cos 
l gr

(19)

where g is the acceleration due to gravity.

4.2. Theoretical and experimental oil sorption coefcients
4.2.1. Theoretical oil sorption coefcients
Oil sorption coefcient is dened as the ratio between m2 and
t. According to Eqs. (13) and (14), the total oil sorption coefcient

Table 1
Basic structure parameters of kapok ber.
External diameter de (m)

Inner diameter di (m)

Linear density Ndt (dtex)

Fiber density f (g/cm3 )

Cell wall density w (g/cm3 )

16.29

14.29

0.65

0.305

1.35

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T. Dong et al. / Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

Table 2
Properties of experimental oil and its contact angle with kapok ber.
Density (g/cm3 )

Oil type
Motor oil
Diesel

Viscosity (mPa s)

0.87
0.83

30.27 10
27.76 103

257.60
6.50

c, oil sorption coefcient of inter-ber pores ce and kapok lumens

ci would be expressed as:
ci = A2 12 2i
ce =

A2 12

l cos 
di
4

3e
l cos 
de
(1 e ) 4

(21)
(22)

where A is the cross-sectional area of the sample tube, 1.131 cm2 ;

l ,  and  are the density, surface tension and viscosity of test oil,
respectively;  is the contact angle between the oil and the kapok
surface; de is the average external diameter of kapok, 16.29 m;
di is the average inner diameter of kapok, 14.29 m; i and e
are porosity contributed by kapok lumens and their inner-ber
pores, respectively. They were calculated according to Eqs. (5)
and (6). When substituting all these parameters to the above

(a)
5

Mass square (g2)

Contact angle( )
69.05
45.73

equations, we obtained the theoretical sorption coefcients of

diesel and motor oil under different packing densities, as shown in
Table 3.

(20)

c = ci + ce

4.2.2. Experimental oil sorption coefcients

Physically, oil sorption coefcient presents the curve slope of
m2 versus t. Fig. 4(a and b)shows the linear tting results of oil
sorption curves of motor oil and diesel for kapok packing densities
ranging from 0.04 g/cm3 to 0.10 g/cm3 . All correlation coefcients
R2 > 0.99 and the slopes of these tting lines, namely experimental oil sorption coefcients expressed as c0 , are presented in
Table 3.
4.2.3. Comparisons between theoretical and experimental oil
sorption coefcients
As we can see from Table 3, theoretical sorption coefcient c of
both motor oil and diesel exhibit excellent agreement with their
experimental results c0 for all kapok packing conditions between
0.04 g/cm3 and 0.10 g/cm3 . This suggests that the dual-scale model
we have developed could predict the actual oil sorption behavior of kapok assemblies effectively and provide some guidance in
practical applications. However kapok assemblies packed less than
0.04 g/cm3 are not tted in the study, because the unlled big pores
within inter-ber distances could lead to deviations between theoretical predictions and experimental results, as explained in Section
4.1.

4.3. Analysis of kapok lumens on oil sorption capacity

2

3
Different packing densities (g/cm )
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10

0
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Time (s)
5

(b)

Mass square (g2)

Surface tension (N/m)

4.4. Impact of packing densities on oil sorption capacity

Diffetent packing densities (g/cm3)

0.03
0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10

0
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

To illustrate how kapok lumens affect the oil sorption capacity of kapok assemblies, the theoretical ratios of diesel and motor
oil absorbed by inter-ber pores and kapok lumens under different packing densities were calculated according to Eqs. (13) and
(14). The results expressed by We /Wi are presented in Table 4.
Also the ratios of oil sorption coefcient between their inter-ber
pores and kapok lumens ce /ci and the total porosity , porosity
of lumens i and inter-ber pores e are calculated and listed in
the table. It can be seen that with the increase of packing density, the porosity of kapok lumens is increased, and the inuence
of kapok lumens on the oil sorption capacity of kapok assemblies
is also enhanced signicantly. When the packing density reaches
at 0.10 g/cm3 , oil absorbed by kapok lumens account for up to one
fth of its total oil absorption for both two oils. While compared
with the ratios of We /Wi , the large ratios of ce /ci of motor oil and
diesel at all kapok packing densities suggest that the oil sorption
rate of kapok assemblies is dominantly determined by inter-ber
pores.

40

Time (s)
Fig. 3. (a and b) Plots of m2 versus t for (a) motor oil, (b) diesel absorbed by kapok
bers at different packing densities.

The oil sorption capacities, the amounts of absorbed oils

per unit mass of kapok bers were obtained from the saturated mass increase of wicking tests. Fig. 5(a and b) shows
sorption capacities of kapok assemblies to motor oil and diesel
as a function of packing densities and furthermore each of
absorbencies is divided into theoretical ratios of contributions
from kapok lumens and inter-ber pores according to gures
listed in Table 4. Similar to the previous observations (Abdullah

T. Dong et al. / Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

329

Table 3
Comparisons between theoretical and experimental oil sorption coefcients.
Motor oil

Packing density
(g/cm3 )

Diesel

Experimental

0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
1.61

Theoretical
2

Experimental

Theoretical
2

c0

ce

ci

c0

ce

ci

8.300
5.970
4.44
3.347
2.600
1.970
1.590

0.996
0.998
0.991
0.998
0.999
0.999
0.999

8.286
5.906
4.365
3.302
2.536
1.967
1.534

0.015
0.023
0.034
0.046
0.060
0.076
0.094

8.301
5.946
4.399
3.346
2.596
2.043
1.628

536.490
383.010
285.110
216.460
168.780
131.900
107.090

0.996
0.992
0.999
0.997
0.997
0.997
0.998

535.041
381.381
281.875
213.213
163.744
126.994
99.076

0.967
1.511
2.176
2.962
3.869
4.896
6.045

536.008
382.893
284.051
216.175
167.613
131.890
105.121

The unit of oil sorption coefcient in the above table is g2 103 /s.

et al., 2010; Lim and Huang, 2007b), the sorption capacities of

kapok assemblies decrease exponentially with the increase of packing density. At the loose packing condition of 0.04 g/cm3 , the
kapok bers could absorb 25.10 g/g and 23.72 g/g of motor oil and
diesel, separately. As the packing density increases to 0.10 g/cm3 ,
their absorbencies decrease to only 8.86 g/g and 8.16 g/g, respectively.
The reasons for drastic decrease of oil sorption capacities are
obvious. As showed in Table 4, the void fraction inside the kapok
microstructure is decreased linearly with increasing packing densities, therefore leading to reduced space for oil absorbing. However,

this does not mean that a lower packing density would be more
desirable for oil sorption, because the large pores within inter-ber
distances will be not lled up with oil when the packing density is less than 0.04 g/cm3 , resulting in insufcient utilization of
kapok assemblies, especially for oil with high density (as depicted
in Fig. 3).

(a)

30

theoretical contributed by kapok lumens

25

Mass square (g2)

2
3

Oil sorption capacity (g/g)

(a)

Different packing densities (g/cm )

0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10

20

15

10

0
0.04

0
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0.07

0.08

0.09

0.10

(b)

25

theoretical contributed by kapok lumens

(b)
20

Oil sorption capacity (g/g)

Mass square (g2)

0.06

Packing density (g/cm3)

Time (s)
5

0.05

Diffetent packing densities (g/cm3)

0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10

15

10

0
0

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Time (s)
Fig. 4. (a and b) Linear ttings of plots of m2 versus t for (a) motor oil, (b) diesel
absorbed by kapok bers at different packing densities.

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.07

0.08

0.09

0.10

Packing density (g/cm3)

Fig. 5. (a and b) Sorption capacity of kapok assemblies to (a) motor oil, (b) diesel as
a function of packing densities.

330

T. Dong et al. / Industrial Crops and Products 61 (2014) 325330

Table 4
Theoretical ratios of oil absorbed by kapok lumens and their inter-ber pores.
Packing density (g/cm3 )

0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10

Motor oil

ce /ci

We /Wi =

86.89
83.61
83.61
77.05
73.77
70.49
67.21

10.15
12.69
12.69
17.77
20.30
22.84
25.38

552.40
256.78
128.38
71.78
42.27
25.88
16.32

23.50
16.02
11.33
8.47
6.50
5.09
4.04

5. Conclusions
The dual-scale model we have developed tted excellently well
with the actual oil sorption behavior of kapok assemblies. Based on
the theoretical analysis, we found that the big lumen of kapok ber
contributed considerably to the oil sorption capacity of its assemblies, which was further enhanced with increasing packing density.
While the oil sorption rate of kapok assemblies is dominantly determined by inter-ber pores.
Acknowledgments
The research is nancially supported by The Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities and Zhejiang Science and Technology Planning Project for the manufacture and
application of high oil-taking kapok nonwomens (numbered by
2013C31139). The authors are also thankful to Chang M.M. and Sun
X.L. for help with the measurement in determining kapok structure
parameters.
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