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."

Comments

clever

[yincrash]

Honestly, that's pretty awesome.

Re:clever

[hedwards]

It has been done before, the article mentions that fact. What's apparently special about this particular material is that it absorbs much less water and it's easier to get the oil out of it again later.

It also appears that it's inexpensive enough that it'll likely pay for itself easily through selling the reclaimed oil and damage reduction.

If they can manufacture it in sufficient quantity at a good price, there's tremendous potential here. Oil spills will happen as long as oil is being transported, we still don't have the best possible way of cleaning it up yet.

This does have other uses as well, it could be used to more efficiently remove oil from storm drains or from ground contamination as well.

sweet deal

[bsDaemon]

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"

Practical Application

[Aqua_boy17]

There's even a video of it in action, removing gasoline from water."

What I need is the exact opposite of this. I have water in the gas tank of my old truck that I can't seem to get rid of. Every time the guage gets below about an eighth of a tank, it begins coughing and stalling. I've tried some commercial remedies available at auto parts stores, but nothing seems to work well. Draining the tank is a real pain, as well as being very dangerous.

Wow, what a coincidence...just as I was typing this, Car Talk came on the radio. Maybe I'll call those guys.

Re:Practical Application

[bmwm3nut]

Are you sure that it's water in the tank? The symptoms don't sound like it. Gasoline floats on water, so water should be on the bottom of the tank right where the fuel pick up is. Water should be pumped out first and then fuel.

Get real

[WindBourne]

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 /.

Re:hydrophobic liquids

[icegreentea]

How often do people ship e85 over ship like that? I'm serious, I have no idea. I would have thought that oil tankers carry primarily crude oil to refineries, and then the separated stuff from it all over the world, where it gets turned into e85 (or e15 or w/e) locally.

Also, since ethanol is polar, it'll rapidly dissolve into the water and then spread everywhere. Even if you had a membrane that would selectively pull out ethanol, by the time you got there it would have dispersed all over the place (horizontally and vertically). Pulling ethanol out like that would be unfeasible I would think.

Yeah but...

[allmanbro2]

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.

Re:Yeah but...

[foniksonik]

As always it depends on where the energy comes from to generate the heat to bring it to a boil... OTOH if the material is expensive, more so than the oil... they'll just do it anyways to reclaim the material.