A new aromatic amino acid based organogel for oil spill recovery

An aromatic amino acid (phenylglycine) based amphiphile with amide and ester groups and a long fatty acyl chain has been found to form organogels selectively in the fuel hydrocarbon solvents including hexane, heptane, cyclohexane, diesel, kerosene and pump-oil at room temperature. Organogels have been well characterized morphologically by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Morphological studies of these xerogels have revealed the presence of fascinating right-handed twisted nanoribbons (in n-heptane and n-octane). Involvement of different non-covalent interactions among the gelator molecules within the gel matrix has been studied using FT-IR and XRD. The organogel in diesel is mechanically stable with high yield stress (177.8 Pa) and storage modulus (>10 ⁴ Pa) values, as has been evidenced from the rheological studies. Interestingly, this gelator compound exhibits phase selective gelation properties and the phase selective gelation occurs efficiently and quickly (within 90 s), in oil-water mixtures and the gelator molecule can be recovered and reused several times easily, indicating its applicability in oil spill cleaning.