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

Best part about this?

[Flamora]

The fact that the oil can be captured and reused, as well as the membrane itself being reusable.

Re:Best part about this?

[Vectronic]

- Redundant.

But, I was hoping the video would show them light the mysterious blue gasoline after.

If it can "recover" gasoline and be instantaniously reuse it... thats very impressive, especially if there are liquids that can reduce, or eliminate the combustability of liquids while mixed with it, and then use the nano-fabric to seperate them and use either for an purpose. Gasoline tanks, airplanes, etc. not to mention many other uses.

Re:Best part about this?

[Vectronic]

Yeah there are quite a few products like that, but most of them are really complex and cancel eachother out (making both ineffective for their original use), at least with respect to something as simple as a piece of fabric being able to seperate them.

But you could combine a fuel with another liquid that releases fumes that cancels out the feuls fumes, so that if there was a leak an ignition would be far less or completely impossible.

But a simple piece of this cloth in a feul filter, could seperate the feul from the liquid, use the feul, and then use the liquid to say cool the engine.

A better version of: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4158551.html

Filtering exhaust fumes?

[mikael]

Could this be used to filter car and big-truck exhaust fumes?

Re:Filtering exhaust fumes?

[Tweenk]

There are two problems:
1. The exhaust fumes would have to be precooled. Otherwise, any absorbed hydrocarbons would be desorbed right away due to high temperature.
2. Reactive species of nitrogen present in exhaust fumes (NO, NO2, etc.) would oxidize the nanowires, so you would have to have a catalytic converter somewhere before them in the exhaust path to remove them, and the cooling phase would have to occur between the converter and the nanowire absorber (platinum only works in high temperatures).

Since the converter does the same job already (by catalyzing the oxidation of unburnt hydrocarbons in excess oxygen), I think this would be redundant. Additionally, I suppose the nanowires would only remove aerosols and not gaseous hydrocarbons, so the standard platinum converter may actually be more efficient at reducing HC emissions than nanowires.

nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Mining Polluted Waterways

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:Mining Polluted Waterways

[Doc Ruby]

I think we'll do it with something like geobacter cultures GM'ed to require a critical "mask" nutrient that is easy to supply to only the target soil volumes where it doesn't occur otherwise (and is itself both harmless and, naturally, biodegradable). That way we can just "innoculate" target areas, work the nutrient into the soil, and let nature do the rest. Perhaps a variety of geobacter that putrefies the plastic into a recoverable sludge, then physically work the sludgy soil to collect the sludge into recoverable pits.

Or maybe there's a way to harvest the geobacter products with earthworms. Maybe we can get the earthworms to depend on the sludge - or some material in it, leaving the energetic oil undigested or stored in their bodies - into their diet. As well as some other "bait" nutrient that we leave at the surface. Then maybe we can just let "nature" do the work of digging the treasure out of the dirt and bringing it home to harvest, with minimum energy input and maximum sniffed out recovery, but all under control so we don't unleash some terrible plague that entirely destroys our "pre-trash" stock of plastic.

Re:hydrophobic liquids

[Drakonik]

True, but is that really such a bad thing? Ethanol, compared to gasoline, is harmless. I'm pretty stoked that we'll be able to just lay down a big mat of this material down on top of oil spills in the ocean, and underneath our cars in garages, or maybe even just wrap it around the oil reservoir to create a double-hull of sorts.

Honestly, this would be revolutionary if it could pick up half its weight in oil. The stuff is RECLAIMABLE for chrissake. I can't really say continued use of oil is going to do the world a lot of good, but this goes a long way to preventing waste and helping prolong our limited supplies.

Re:Yeah but...

[Castletech]

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. Very true but think about the time and energy used to clean up current oil spills. It may balance out.

Re:hydrophobic liquids

[smaddox]

Yeah, but it is only reclaimable if you heat it above the evaporation point of the oil. Good luck doing that in air. The risk of combustion is too high.

Doing so in a nitrogen environment is possible, but is it really any cheaper than just making another sheet?

Re:Human hair is awesome too...

[TubeSteak]

Human hair does a great job of adsorbing oil, is renewable, and reusable. ... 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 think human hair could be used to soak up some of the $2.5 billion Exxon owes the businessmen and citizens of Alaska?

At least the case will finally be over in July, when the Supreme Court hands down its decision.

Same or similar to this earlier discovery?

[Dalrain]

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

Re:hydrophobic liquids

[Drakonik]

Don't they boil crude oil to separate gasoline from diesel from plastic-grade crude, and so on? I think (assuming that the material is heat-resistant enough) we could just throw a big pile of it into the separator tanks and boil it out.

It's possible that I misunderstand the process, of course. Is it just not that simple?

Unanticipated consequences?

[mencomenco]

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.

Re:Human hair is awesome too...

[Tweenk]

It can also be burned as fuel when you're done with it. Hair contains about 5% of sulfur. Burning large amounts of hair wouldn't be a very good idea, unless you like inhaling sulfur oxides.

Re:clever

[Kamots]

I think the clever part about this is that you can heat up these new pads, boil the oil off... let it condense elsewhere...

And then you've got reclaimed oil and a pad that's ready to go again.

Re:Get real

[StrahdVZ]

Also according to the article, production techniques are similar to paper and thus the expect it to be considerably cheaper. Of course, patent capitalism will disagree.

Never eat sodium polyacrylate

[patio11]

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".)