Monkiskin Floor Sweep is a safe, easy to use non-toxic absorbent that is suitable for use on all hard surfaces. Will absorb a wide range of liquids including, fuels, lubricants and oils (animal, vegetable, mineral, synthetic ).

As a preventative measure, Monkiskin can be used in loading areas, refueling depots, workshops and at beach fronts.

Monkiskin Floor Sweep is available in 2.2 Gallon Cans, 5 Gallon Bags and 22 Gallon Bags see Sizes & MSRP Schedule

Monkiskin Floor Sweep is nontoxic in its unused state. Always use safety proceedures recommended for the liquids being absorbed.

For more information refer to Materials Safety Data Sheet.

In this experiment used motor oil was used to check the maximum amount of oil that Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent can hold. This is important when making recommendations for its use to soak up spills. The Air Filled Porosity/Water Holding Capacity (AFP/WHC) method and apparatus of AS 3743 was used.

Firstly the WHC of the particular batch of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent was measured using the conventional AS 3743 methodology. It found that 710 mls of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent (the volume of an AFP/WHC core) would hold about 400mls of water against gravity or a WHC of 56.3%. Note that this occurs with a suction height of 12 cm (ie 12 cm deep Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent).

In the oil experiment 4 treatments were set up. Firstly 710 mls of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent was measured into each of 4 large trays. To each of the treatment trays 100mls, 200mls, 400mls, and 800mls of oil was poured and thoroughly mixed in. Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent plus oil was then placed back into a 710ml AFP core which rested on a rack to allow oil to drain. The cores were left over the weekend (60 hours) for oil to drain and then the oil draining into the tray was weighed. The density of oil had previously been measured at 0.85g/ml allowing this to be converted to a volume of oil. Results are expressed in Table 1.

Discussion and Conclusions: These results appear to show an unexpected “enhancement” effect ie that the more oil that is added the more will be held. Plotting the results on a graph (see appendix) demonstrates that there is actually an asymtote to this, ie that the maximum oil holding ability levels off at about 405 mls /710mls Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent or 57%.

One explanation for this “enhancement effect” is that the material swells in the presence of oil quite noticeably and this would increase its oil holding ability.

An interesting observation is that the oil holding capacity is not dissimilar to the water holding capacity.

A fair conclusion to allow for all situations would be that the material will hold a minimum of 40% of its volume of oil in all conceivable circumstances. To claim 50% would be reasonable in nearly every conceivable circumstance.

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A potentially important application is to use the material to remove oil from the surface of waters or to separate by filtration oil from water.

In this experiment three AFP/WHC cores were filled with 710mls of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent. These were then emptied into each of three tough plastic bags and emulsified oil/water mixtures were added. This was achieved by rapidly shaking 500mls water with each of 100, 200, and 400mls of oil and rapidly pouring the milky emulsion into the plastic bag before the oil and water separated again. Contents of the bag were stirred and shaken thoroughly and left for about one hour to full soak up their contents.

Contents were then emptied carefully back into the three AFP cores and left 60 hours to thoroughly drain. The volumes of water and oil draining from the cores was then measured. Results are given in Table 2.

Discussion and Conclusions: The “enhancement effect” of increasing fluid holding capacity with increasing oil addition is also evidence here but to a smaller extent than with adding oil alone. Also, swelling was again seen with added oil.

The interesting effect also is the “partitioning effect” that is, in the presence of an oil/water mixture the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent preferentially absorbs oil over water. The results also demonstrate a “competitive effect” in that, if the preference for oil was absolute then no matter how much water was added the oil would be exclusively held. This is not the case and clearly, from the first experiment the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent should have been able to hold between 300 and up to 400mls of oil which it cannot do in the presence of excess water. The net result is that while oil is preferred over water increasing amounts of water have an adverse effect on oil retention.

A rough “partitioning ratio” can be estimated from the proportion of oil added and held vs the proportion of water added and held. These are given in the final row of the table. The average of the three ratios is 1.97 or about 2. It is thus true to say that Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent shows twice the affinity for oil as for water.

This can be translated into a recommendation. The total fluid holding capacity is about say 52%. If presented with say 2 litres of 40% oil/ 60% water emulsion 1 litre of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent could be predicted to absorb 520mls of the mixture and of this 520 mls twice as much will be oil as water or about 346 mls oil and 173mls water. Thus if the 2 litres was 40% oil or 800mls of oil then 1 litre of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent would remove 43% of the oil.

How much Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent is required to remove all the oil is a more difficult calculation. Actually a 40/60 oil water emulsion is higher in oil than most real life situations. Take a 5% oil film on 95% water, say 10 litres of it or 500mls oil on 9.5litres water. How much Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent is required to remove all the oil but leave as much water as possible?

Assuming the total fluid holding capacity of 52% is composed of 2/3 oil and 1/3 water (partitioning coefficient of 2) then while holding 500mls oil the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent must also hold 250mls water or a total fluid capacity of 750 mls. Divide this by 0.52 (the fluid holding capacity) we get 1442 mls of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent. This should remove all the oil and only 250mls of water. A check of this was made adding 1500mls of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent to a bucket containing 9.5 litres water and 500mls of oil. This was then stirred for a few minutes every hour for 3 hours. Upon removal of the floating Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent very little oil (less than 10mls) was left.

A general recommendation would be that the maximum oil removal can be obtained by adding three times as much Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent as the anticipated oil volume. For optimum and complete removal this could be increased to say a factor of four. ie to completely clean up 1 litre of oil off water will require 3-4 litres of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent.

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Discussion: All contaminants show a reduction upon the addition of coir to the contaminated water. The absorption of ammonium is likely to be by simple cation exchange and is characteristically non linear. The pattern shown here of diminishing ammonium removed as more Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent is added is very typical of an “exchange isotherm” (Sposito 1989). The relationship fundamentally says that as the concentration of ammonium external to the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent exchange sites increases the absorbent will absorb (or exchange) more ammonium, or vice versa, as the ammonium level outside the exchange site decreases it will absorb less ammonium. This essentially says that while ammonium concentrations in a landfill solution can obviously be reduced by Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent it can never be eliminated except at infinite Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent concentrations. This is typical of exchange reactions and also phosphate removal from solution which is also concentration dependant. It is also dependant on the presence of other ions on the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent and could be improved where certain ions are absent (for example potassium which is much like ammonium in size and shape).

From this experiment the best we can achieve is to approximately halve an ammonium concentration of 70mg/l by adding equal quantities of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent to water. This will change depending on the initial ammonium concentration.

Zinc behaves differently to ammonium. This is essentially because Zinc is a “preferred exchange ion” and does not compete with sodium, potassium, calcium and all the other exchange ions being greatly preferred over these other ions. This is typical of all the high molecular weight (heavy) metals. It would appear that levels of zinc significantly higher than 10 ppm can be totally removed from the solution. This is likely to be the case for a range of other high molecular weights metals.

It can be calculated that the specific absorption capacity of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent for zinc is at least 50.5mgZn per litre of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent. As stated it could be significantly higher than this, we did not use a lower Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent content than 100mls. If we had used 50mls we might demonstrate greater capacity.

Phenol and cyanide show a different trend with significant reductions only occurring at 400 and 600mls/0.5l (800 to 1200 mls Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent per litre of water). The mechanism for removal of these contaminants is likely to be physisorption rather than cation exchange (both are weak acids which means they are negatively charged).

In a practical sense, once about 50/50 Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent and water ratio is exceeded the water has to be squeezed out of the absorbent as no free water remains.

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Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent will absorb significant quantities of oil. It is likely that its oil, solvent, or water total holding capacity are all similar at around 55% by volume. Applying a small safety margin a simple recommendation would be that, for oil or solvent sorption in the absence of water, twice as much Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent as the volume of oil to be absorbed is required. If you need to soak up 1 litre of oil use 2 litres of Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent.

In the presence of water there is competition for sorption sites in the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent with oil. Oil is preferred over water however and a rough partitioning coefficient of 2 can be calculated. This means that, in the presence of infinite water the fluid sorbed onto the Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent from a mixture of oil and water will be 2/3 oil and 1/3 water. A simple recommendation is to apply 3 to 4 times more Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent than the anticipate oil volume and all the oil floating on water will be removed.

A major advantage is that the oil/Monkiskin - Industrial Absorbent mixture is buoyant and remains floating on the water where it can be removed as a semisolid using, for example, a fine scoop net rather than booms, skimmers, tankage etc.

For the removal of contaminants from waters the product is likely to prove highly effective for metals due to specific adsorption on exchange sites. Even at a low absorbent to water ratios it is likely that all metals will be removed at levels well in excess of 10mg/l. This requires further work to find out what maximum level of dissolved metal can be removed.

For other contaminants the sorption is controlled by isothermic adsorption which predicts that we can only remove all the substance at infinite concentration of coir which is obviously not practical. The material can, however, reduce and lower the concentrations of a variety of organic and inorganic substances.

The product generally appears worthy of consideration as an environmental pollution control products for spill kits, oil removal, and removal of metals from waters at least

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