Slashdot Mirror
Cloth Successfully Separates Oil From Gulf Water
Chinobi writes "Di Gao, an assistant professor at the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, has developed a method of separating oil from water within just seconds using a cotton cloth coated in a chemical polymer that makes it both hydrophilic (it bonds with the hydrogen atoms in water) and oleophobic (oil-repelling), making it absolutely perfect for blocking oil and letting water pass through. Gao tested his filter successfully on Gulf Oil water and oil and has an impressive video to demonstrate the results." This is a laboratory demonstration; the technology hasn't been tested at scale.
Now how about we figure out a way to clean up the marshes that got fucked with an oil-slicked spiked baseball bat?
Living With a Nerd
If it's fixed, we won't be able to get rich quick turning tarballs into, basically, gold!
Those life forms will be considered crude oil eventually. This just speeds up the classification process.
Nullius in verba
Prepped and ready for deep frying?
That is all.
No, the idea he has, is that the entire gulf of Mexico is filtered through a 30 cm^2 cloth, because, obviously, this process does not scale in any way, shape or form.