How the University of Wollongong, Australia uses Iron Oxide nanoparticles to clean up Oil Spills

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.