New Oil Spill Clean-up Technique
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have proposed a new oil spill clean-up technique which is set to be simple, fast, and energy-efficient.
MIT hopes to use magnets to strip the oil from the water. The whole system will be highly efficient and all parts of the system are recyclable, including the oil extracted from the water.
The idea is simple. The spilled oil would be pumped out of the sea and onto a ship where it is mixed with a water repellent ferrofluid. Ferrofluids are a magnetic liquid that contains tiny nano-magnets in a suspension. The ferrofluid would basically magnetize the oil only, allowing a large set of magnets to separate the oil from the water with an incredibly high degree of efficiency. The ferrofluid can then be separated from the oil in another part of the process.
This method for cleaning oil from water not only achieves an excellent separation, but it also uses far less energy than conventional techniques, and the whole process can take place on-board a ship so there is no need for energy to transport the oil and water mixture to land to be separated.
By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com
See Also:
- Oil Prices < $40/Barrel?
- Gold vs Oil Chart
- Oil Market Bottoming?
- The Endless War: Saudi Arabia Goes on the Offensive Against Iran
