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MIT Develops "Paper Towel" For Oil Spills

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the cleanup-on-ocean-three dept.

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."

4 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. sweet deal by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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"

  2. Yeah but... by allmanbro2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Yeah but... by foniksonik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  3. Re:clever by hedwards · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.