Electrospun polystyrene (PS) fibre mat has been shown to have great potential as an oil sorbent due to its high sorption capacity and oil-water selectivity. Poor mechanical properties, due to the lack of inter-fibre bonding, has been a limiting factor in its use in such applications. In this study, mats of polymer-blends of polystyrene (PS) and thermoplastic polyurethane (PU) fibres, in different polymer weight ratios, were produced and investigated for possible oil sorption application.

A comprehensive physico-chemical, thermal, mechanical and sorption characterisation of the different polymer-blends was undertaken, to examine the effect of blend ratio on the fibre mat. Characterisation was by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermo-gravimetric and differential analysis (TG-DTA), mechanical tensile testing, and by sorption analysis.

The microstructural properties of the fibres appeared significantly dependent upon the relative blend ratio. DSC revealed that good interaction/miscibility existed between the two polymers. Tensile strength characterisation showed that a pure PS fibre mat had a poor tensile strength, but the value increased over one order of magnitude with the addition of PU in the polymer matrix, attributed to the formation of inter-fibre bonds. Conversely, the sorption capacity (SC) decreased with increasing PU addition. Modulating the blend ratio could therefore provide a balance between the desired sorption capacity and the mechanical behaviour of resultant mats.

Sorption capacity is a complex interaction between fibre and mat characteristics but the polymer blend technique reported here offers a simple, effective and inexpensive method of addressing the poor mechanical properties of electrospun PS fibre by adding PU and via enhancing micro/nano scale interactions between the two polymers in the blend.

由于其高吸附能力和油水选择性，静电纺聚苯乙烯（PS）纤维毡已显示出作为油吸附剂的巨大潜力。由于缺乏纤维间粘合，机械性能差已成为其在此类应用中使用的限制因素。在这项研究中，生产了不同聚合物重量比的聚苯乙烯（PS）和热塑性聚氨酯（PU）纤维聚合物共混物毡，并研究了其可能的吸油应用。

对不同的聚合物共混物进行了全面的理化，热，机械和吸附特性研究，以检验共混比对纤维毡的影响。通过场发射扫描电子显微镜（FESEM），能量色散X射线（EDX）光谱，衰减全反射傅立叶变换红外（ATR-FTIR）光谱，差示扫描量热法（DSC），热重和差示分析（TG）进行表征-DTA），机械拉伸试验以及吸附分析。

纤维的微观结构性质似乎显着取决于相对混合比。DSC显示两种聚合物之间存在良好的相互作用/互溶性。拉伸强度表征表明，纯PS纤维毡的拉伸强度较差，但由于在聚合物基质中添加PU，其值增加了一个数量级，这归因于纤维间键的形成。相反，吸附量（SC）随PU添加量的增加而降低。因此，调节混合比可以在所需的吸附能力和所得垫的机械性能之间提供平衡。

吸附能力是纤维和垫子特性之间的复杂相互作用，但此处报道的聚合物共混技术提供了一种简单，有效且廉价的方法，可通过添加PU并增强两者之间的微米/纳米级相互作用来解决电纺PS纤维不良的机械性能。共混物中的聚合物。