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MIT Develops "Paper Towel" For Oil Spills
TheUnknownCoder writes "MIT scientists have created a Nanowire mesh that can selectively absorb hydrophobic (oil-like) liquids from water up to 20 times its weight. The membrane can be recycled many times for future use, and the oil itself can also be recovered. There's even a video of it in action, removing gasoline from water."
Honestly, that's pretty awesome.
are enjoying rum being brought back aboard ship en masse.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The fact that the oil can be captured and reused, as well as the membrane itself being reusable.
So, we can now clean up the environment without losing the petrol? That's so good it has to be fattening.
This is the sort of thing which should have made the "top 10 technologies of the next 4 years" list rather than punk-ass "social networks"
Does it absorb other liquids as well? If this absorbent power works as well as advertised for other fluids, I may have to petition MIT to release this fabric in sock-form.
Oh.. umm, so I can uhh.. dry my feet. Yeah, that's it. Feet.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
... absorbs blue dye from gasoline. News at 11.
that is a great idea... but it's only nonpolar things it can absorb. if it's e85 they're transporting, only 15% will be recovered, and that will all be gasoline (the rest'll just get the fishies drunk)
but if it did pick up polar compounds, it would also pick up water
p.s. never eat sodium polyacrylate.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Wow, what a coincidence...just as I was typing this, Car Talk came on the radio. Maybe I'll call those guys.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Could this be used to filter car and big-truck exhaust fumes?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
When we completely run out of oil we will have found the perfect solution to clean up the environment...
Also, by that time the ability to recover the last bits of oil from the oceans from spills in the past will be fought over with tremendous military might, even if it's done from rowing boats.
Now I know why there are so many people in prison, it's to supply our future stock of galley slaves powering the next global war.
MP3 Search Engine
Don't forget to bring a towel!
It was from Gartner. They are a bunch of idiots, so why pay attention to those kinds of lists. In fact, I was actually surprised that it made /.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is actually not new. My Dad is a geologist and he has had this stuff for quite some time. They're actually jokingly referred to as diapers. Although this implementation from MIT is an upgrade to the current ones, dare I say, more absorbent than the leading brand name oil picker upper.
I'd love to see someone use these materials to filter regular polluted water in our waterways (after a regular filter to keep living creatures out) to both clean the water and recover usable chemicals for fuel.
And someday someone's going to figure out how to cheaply and easily mine our landfills for all that plastic we've buried for nearly a century. When the cheap oil's gone soon, that's going to be a reasonable alternative if we have the tech.
--
make install -not war
Human hair does a great job of adsorbing oil, is renewable, and reusable. It can also be burned as fuel when you're done with it. 200,000 pounds of it goes into landfills every day. You could have enough to adsorb the entirety of Exxon Valdez by collecting what is produced in this country in a week.... and it would be essentially free.
You kids and your fancy nanowire meshes... ;-)
Somehow, I'm thinking this could be used to cook bacon (maybe because its 9:00 in the morning). Then again, grease and oil makes bacon good. MIT better not ruin my bacon-eating-experience!!!!
That's a pretty slick invention!
To reclaim the oil, you have to boil it. Seems like on many scales you would use more energy "wringing out" the paper than you would get from the recovered fuel.
This stuff has been available for years... Maybe the new stuff is thinner, but it's the same idea, nothing that innovative beyond what already exists.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Best. Tag. Ever!
--Xandu
The slicker picker upper.
Not when drunk from a jug in large quantities! Yee Haw! Joe Bob, quit huggin' yer cousin.
Invenio via vel creo
I was reading the description, and it seems to have the same properties as a material discovered by a professor at my institution. http://www.wooster.edu/News/0708/news/PaulEdmistonGel.php
As a bioengineer, I'd be asking what's the "shred strength" and propensity to release individual nanofiblers in a variety of situations.
It's easy to forsee accidental damage to these meshes either during manufacturing or deployemnt in industrial or maritime settings. What's the environmental and biological consequence of releasing or ingesting science's latest laboratory miracle?
And kudos to previous posters for querying lifecycle energy costs.
But more importantly, will it blend?
Whats interesting about the demonstration is what isn't in it. Seawater. So it absorbs oils fine in what appears to be clean tap water.
i hate paper towels. just use a wash cloth or cloth towel. i see all these advertisements for paper towels that you can use over and over, JUST LIKE A CLOTH TOWEL, only you throw it away. -Christian Loriau
But is it as amazing as this stuff? http://www.shamwow.com/
Quantum subatomic mesh structures, sharp enough and strong enough to cut through CO2 inter-atomic bonds without having to put energy into it. Would also help when all the trees are gone.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
With the price of oil going up, it is only a matter of time that the USA will uncap their reserves in Alaska. Hey!, wouldn't you do the same?, ...it seems to cost $3 to bring up a barrel of oil and sell at $150 seems like a hell of a deal.
So spillages will undoubtedly increase in the future. Good thing we (actually MIT) have discovered this "Nanowire mesh."
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
http://www.spillsupply.com/Pads.html
My Dad used to be a mechanic at a large excavation company and when I was a teenager, he used to bring me into the shop to help him out on weekends. Because gas and oil spills are common in such a shop, they had these white pads that would soak up gas and oil but nothing else, not even water. The mechanics called them diapers. Did MIT just reinvent these using nano materials? The only difference I can see between these and the MIT invention is that the shop diapers is that the latter were definitely not reusable, although they could soak up an amazing amount of liquid.
Well there go my dinner plans. Thanks a lot, Slashdot.
(OK, for those of us who are not materials scientists: its the chemical equivalent of D&D's old Dust of Dryness. You know, does 6D6 if sprinkled on a water elemental, or draws the water out of what it touches on the way down if you eat it. Not too likely to be fatal, though, unless you swallow it in quantities large enough to make table salt fatal. The MSDS says emergency treatment is "drink two glasses of water and then induce vomiting".)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
It's about time the tampon had a revolutionary technology!
No one heard of shamwow?
There was an article on The Onion years ago about a new three-ply Bounty paper towel that was supposed to be so absorbent, moisture would be pulled into it, whereupon the liquid would go through a rigorous "Moisture Punishment System". If you didn't reseal the roll in its special case when you weren't using it, it could absorb all the moisture in the room and asphyxiate you. When asked if they were thinking about introducing a four-ply version, the Bounty spokesperson said, "Oh, no. That would be playing God."