Researchers say reusable sponges that can sop up oil without absorbing water could make cleanup efforts more effective and more efficient.
, experts say surprisingly little has changed in how oil spills are cleaned up.
"I think a lot of folks don't realize that when there is an oil spill, in almost all cases, most of the oil is never cleaned up by humans," said Seth Darling, director of the Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois."We clean up some, and the rest Mother Nature eventually cleans up, though not quickly, and it wreaks havoc on the local environment all that time.
"Oil and water don't mix well, but when they do, it's very difficult to remove," said Vinayak Dravid, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern, who led the research."We wanted something that could not only suck up oil but could do it very quickly." Researchers at Northwestern University developed a reusable sponge with a magnetic coating that attracts oil and can absorb more than 30 times its own weight.Both Darling and Dravid said their sponges were designed to fill a gap in available technologies to clean up oil spills, offering officials a new way to respond to major incidents like the, when an estimated 210 million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.
"There's been upgrades in modeling how spills move and how oil affects fish and animals in the deep ocean and marshes, but in terms of response work, there were a few things that have been tried but nothing that rose to the level of something that will be used moving forward," Pardue said.At present, cleanup crews typically use booms to contain oil spills and prevent them from spreading.
With the Oleo Sponge, Darling said it's a new type of absorbent that can sop up spills at the surface and when oil has seeped deeper into the water column. And since the sponges can be reused, they are a"greener" alternative to the tools currently available.
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