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

In other news Oil Tanker crews....

[g0bshiTe]

are enjoying rum being brought back aboard ship en masse.

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"

What else does it absorb?

[name*censored*]

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.

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.

hydrophobic liquids

[overcaffein8d]

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.

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?

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.

finally :)

[jacquesm]

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.

Re:finally :)

[maxume]

Nuclear powered liposuction is equally as ridiculous, and it would probably result in more fuel, at least the first time around.

Re:finally :)

[TubeSteak]

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. There's actually a lot of oil sitting on the sea floor, because it doesn't float forever.

That seafloor oil is one of the main reasons that drilling off the coast of California and in the Gulf of Mexico is not allowed. Whenever there is a spill (and there always is, platform drilling is dirty), oil sinks and mixes in with mud on the seabed. Whenever a big storm rolls in, some of that oil gets churned up and washes ashore.

If you've ever been on a beach with oil on it, it isn't pretty.
You need a stiff brush to get the hydrocarbons off your feet.

Here's the most recent example I can recall:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiyeh_power_station_oil_spill
That oil is going to be washing up on beaches & shorelines for decades.

Re:Practical Application

[maxume]

Unless you are constantly and effectively avoiding gas that contains ethanol as an oxidizer, you probably have some problem other than persistent water (so water could be constantly leaking in...). The ethanol will pull the water into the fuel mix and carry it through the engine just fine, so the water should burn off in a tank or two, it shouldn't persist if you are using gas with ethanol in it, and you probably are.

"Dry gas" products are often just ethanol or methanol.

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:Get real

[ColdWetDog]

Besides we can (and do) already DO this. We've had these hydrophilic absorbent pads for years. Have one in the bilge of my boat right now. They work great (even when wet which is supposedly one of the advantages of this new thing).

In fact, the US Coast Guard gets pretty annoyed if you don't have some method of cleaning up spills. From TFA, this stuff is supposed to work "better" - tastes great, less filling, picks up more stuff, won't absorb water. Likely it will cost lots more (bad idea, the stuff we have is reasonably expensive). The reusable but is interesting - I'm not sure how you would get the hydrocarbon out of the fabric without creating more of a mess or environmental issue than you already have. If you CAN do this, you have one leg up on the big boy versions of these products that are used to contain actual oil spills. These get recycled in the dump. AFAIK, it's always been possible to recycle the oil from the commercial booms, just not easy, environmentally friendly (think of the detergent that the spill containment people dump out to break up the heavier oil products) nor economically feasible.

We'll see, if it ever gets out of the lab.

Human hair is awesome too...

[MacDork]

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... ;-)

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.

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.

Don't forget Cherokee hair!

[DaFork]

Human hair does a great job of adsorbing oil

I hear that Cherokee hair is the most absorbent material in the world!

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: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.

Re:Get real

[ColdWetDog]

Good point, missed that. But that means you have to heat the pad to between 175 and 300 Degrees C. That's a fair amount of energy there.