Pomelo peel (PP) is mainly composed

Pomelo peel (PP) is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin (Hameed, Mahmoud, & Ahmad, 2008), while cellulose and hemicellulose are more hydrophilic than lignin, thus are responsible for moisture uptake (Rowell & Banks, 1987). Large amounts of PP are disposed after consumption, resulting in waste of resources and land use. However, as an effective natural sorbent, PP shows high oil sorption capacity due to the macropore (2–20 μm), because the macropore provides sufficient space for holding oil. Up to now, several methods have been reported to fabricate simple and effective oil adsorption materials, such as acetylation of kapok fibers (Wang, Zheng, & Wang, 2013b), styrene modification of fibers (Lin et al., 2012), esterification of cellulosic materials (Sathasivam & Mas Haris, 2010) and sol-gel method to generate nano-structure onto the surface of cotton (Liu, Ma, Zang, Gao, & Wang, 2014). The oil sorption capability of natural fibers depends mainly on the hydrophobic–oleophylic surface. Therefore, the aim of this work is to modify the surface of PP and enhance the oil sorption capacity with acetic anhydride and styrene.