Saving the Oceans From Oil Spills

 

Engineering Oleophilic Sponges to Save the Oceans

No matter what your take on fossil fuels or renewable energy is - we can all agree that oil spills are not great, and we need a better way to clean them up. Right now, to clean up the thousands of oil spills that happen each year in the United States, we mainly just set them on fire.

A Decade After Deepwater Horizon, We're Still Cleaning Up Oil Spills The Same Way

A decade after Deepwater Horizon, we're still cleaning up oil spills the same way

Off the coastline of Sri Lanka, where a burning cargo ship has been spilling toxic chemicals and plastic pellets over the past two weeks, the government is preparing for the next possible stage of the disaster: As the ship sinks, it may also spill some of the hundreds of tons of oil in its fuel tanks.

Photo: The MV X-Press Pearl on June 2nd, 2021. [Photo: Sri Lankan Air Force/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock]

Scientists Created New Sponge That Could Clean Up Oil Spills

Oleo Sponge Named a Finalist for the (International) INDEX AWARD

Argonne National Laboratory on LinkedIn: "Oleo Sponge named an Index Project Finalist - http://bit.ly/2JUHYMO"

July 25, 2019: Argonne National Laboratory posted images on LinkedIn

The Index Project, formerly INDEX: Design to Improve Life, is a Danish nonprofit organisation that promotes designs aimed at the improvement of life worldwide, both in developed and developing countries. The organisation is behind the biennial Index Award, the world's biggest design award.

Could Mussels Teach Us How to Clean Up Oil Spills?

Could Mussels Teach Us How To Clean Up Oil Spills?

Mussels may be popular among seafood lovers, but many boaters consider them pests. They colonize ship bottoms, clog water pipes and stick to motors. To chemical engineers, though, those very same properties make mussels marvelous. They can stick to just about any surface, and underwater, no less.

Featuring research by Dr. Seth Darling at Argonne National Labs.

Slick New Solution for Cleaning Up Oil Spills

A Slick New Solution For Cleaning Up Oil

Oil spills can result in billions of dollars in losses, and a considerable portion of the cost comes from the effort required to clean up these spills. Existing methods for cleanup are limited in their utility.

Genius Way to Soak Up Oil Spills

New Technology for Soaking Up Massive Oil Spills

Seat cushion material used for oil spill cleanup
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal researchers have created a new tool to clean up oil spills by tinkering with the kind of foam found in seat cushions.

The modified foam can soak up oil floating on water and lurking below the surface, and then can be repeatedly wrung out and reused, the researchers say.

It "just bounces back like a kitchen sponge," said co-inventor Seth Darling, a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.

Other oil spill sponges are already on the market, and modifying polyurethane foam for this purpose is not a new idea. But the Argonne researchers used a new procedure to coat the foam with a material that attracts oil but not water.

Darling and colleagues recently published a preliminary description of the foam's performance in a laboratory. Experts who examined that paper said it's hard to tell how well it would work in real-world settings, but that it appears suitable for making it in large quantities.

Argonne is looking for a commercial partner to develop what it calls the "Oleo Sponge."