DailyDirt: Oil And Water Aren't Supposed To Mix...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Feb 29th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

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]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: bp deepwater horizon disaster, carbon nanotube, magnet, magnetite, nanosponge, nanotech, oil, oil spill, pollution

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JoeCool (profile), 29 Feb 2016 @ 5:57pm

Best way to prevent future spills
I'm giving this away free of charge! There is a way to guarantee that no oil will EVER be spilled again... just make the board of directors and CEO personally clean up the spill by hand. It'll never happen again.
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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 29 Feb 2016 @ 6:20pm

Actually, Water Dissolves Just About Everything To Some Degree
Pour water into a glass, and a very small amount of the glass dissolves in the water.

Even without a wetting agent, a very small amount of oil will dissolve in water.

With a wetting agent (e.g. detergent), the proportion of oil that will dissolve in water goes up by many orders of magnitude.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 29 Feb 2016 @ 11:25pm

That will so totally help.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 29 Feb 2016 @ 11:26pm

And i really must...

Fucking magnets... How do they work?!
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- Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 1 Mar 2016 @ 1:03am
  
  Re: Fucking magnets... How do they work?!
  It is a real biological mystery, where the little baby magnets come from...
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  - Michael Ho (profile), 1 Mar 2016 @ 10:22am
    
    Re: Re: Fucking magnets... How do they work?!
    Tortoises all the way down...
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
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Ninja (profile), 1 Mar 2016 @ 4:58am

Spills keep happening because companies and their respective management aren't severely punished. Close one huge company because of those catastrophes and jail their executives and you'll see how fast other companies would fix their vulnerabilities...
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