DailyDirt: Oil And Water Aren't Supposed To Mix...
Techdirt. 2016-02-29
Summary:
We've previously mentioned an Xprize winner that came up with a better way to clean up an oil spill after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. We've also seen some patented but somewhat impractical oil-eating bacteria approaches to cleaning up oil spills. If you've ever wondered, why don't they just use magnets? Here you go, three different ways that could help recover oil from a spill on water. 
- So far, there have been 13 large-scale oil spill disasters across the globe, and clean up technology hasn't improved that much over the years. Adding magnetic particles (magnetite) to oil spills might help efforts to reclaim the oil and minimize the environmental impact. [url]
- Magnetized oil for easier spill clean up has been done by academic researchers at MIT, too. It's nice to be able to separate oil and water more quickly, but we still haven't quite found a complete solution for cleaning up wide areas of choppy waters contaminated with varying kinds of hydrocarbons. [url]
- Nanosponge materials could help soak up oils in water -- and they're also magnetic. Rice University researchers made these carbon nanotube based materials and tested them under lab conditions, but scaling up the fabrication of these sponges that could work in oceans or other waterways needs more development. [url]