Cleaning up oil spills is a very messy and labour
intensive problem. Oil sticks to everything, endangering wildlife and killing
marine life.
But what if you could use magnets to remove oil from
an oil spill?
Dr. Yi Du at the University of Wollongong, Australia
and his team have discovered a way to remove oil using nanoparticles of Iron (III)
Oxide (Fe2O3) as described in “Magnets
could pull oil out of ocean before wildlife is harmed”, published 16 June
2016 By Alice Klein, New Scientist.
The idea is blessedly simply as published in the Journal ACS Nano, and Physical Chemistry Chemical
Physics Journal.
In fact, it very similar but less complicated than the
graphene oxide-based nanobots that scientists in Germany and Spain had
developed to remove heavy metal contaminant like lead from water as explained
in my blog
article entitled “How
Graphene oxide nanobots make Heavy Metal Contaminated Water Drinkable and
Nano-Mining Possible”.
So how exactly do you remove oil using nanoparticles
of iron oxide?
University
of Wollongong, Australia and Iron Oxide Nanoparticles - Removing Oil one
Droplet at a time
Nanoparticle, basically clumps of 20 to 100 molecules
of Iron (III) Oxide (Fe2O3) 25-nanometre-wide particles
are sprinkled on an oil spill. Because they’re nanoparticulate in size and thus
very reactive, they'll react and bind with the oil droplets in the oil spill,
sinking with the heavier oil as well.
Then a ship with a fairly strong electromagnet can be
used to literally pull the oil out of the water as explained by Dr. Yi Du,
quote: “Then, ships with small magnets could move around the spill, and all the
oil would be sucked towards the magnets and collected”.
Best of all, the nanoparticle of Iron (III) Oxide (Fe2O3),
basically iron rust, can be reused and are non-toxic to quote Dr. Yi Du: “Iron
oxide nanoparticles are already commonly used in medical imaging, so we know
they’re safe”.
Hopefully this idea could also be applied to removing other
types of pollutants such as microbeads as described in my blog article
entitled “How
US microbeads ban by 2017 means NEPA ban coming to protect Coral Reefs”.
Testing of the use of nanoparticles of Iron (III) Oxide
(Fe2O3) on mini oil spills in tanks is ongoing, but the
real test is on a real oil spill in open water.
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