Home > News > Yet Another Nanomaterial Does a Good Job at Oil Spill Remediation
May 4th, 2013
Yet Another Nanomaterial Does a Good Job at Oil Spill Remediation
Abstract:
This blog has chronicled many nanomaterials suggested for cleaning up oil spills over the years, with the most recent being an aerogel developed in China that the researchers claim to be the lightest ever produced and capable of soaking up a rather astounding 900 times its own weight in oil. This compares favorably to the current mainstay for oil spill remediation, hay, which only absorbs 3 to 15 times its weight in oil.
Now researchers at Deakin University in Australia have developed a nanosheet made of a porous boron nitride that can soak up 33 times its own weight in oil. While this weight-to-oil-ratio figure doesn't seem to stack up favorably to some other technologies, like the aerogel above, it does have some side benefits that are lacking in some of the other solutions.
Notable among them is that once the nanosheets have soaked up their share of oil, they can be cleaned and ready to be used again by merely letting them heat in ambient air for two hours. They also are hydrophobic, meaning they repel water, which allows them to float on the surface of the water and be available for easy retrieval during a clean up.
Source:
spectrum.ieee.org
Bookmark:
| Related News Press |
News and information
Simulating magnetization in a Heisenberg quantum spin chain April 5th, 2024
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Blog sites
First measurement of electron energy distributions, could enable sustainable energy technologies June 5th, 2020
Novel Electrode Structure Provides New Promise for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries December 3rd, 2016
Peter Diamandis Thinks Nanotech Will Interface With Human Minds September 1st, 2016
Graphene-Enabled Paper Makes for Flexible Display August 1st, 2016
Environment
Billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving baby food containers: Exposure to plastic particles kills up to 75% of cultured kidney cells July 21st, 2023
 |
||
 |
||
| The latest news from around the world, FREE | ||
 |
||
|
|
||
| Premium Products | ||
 |
||
|
Only the news you want to read!
Learn More |
||
 |
||
|
Full-service, expert consulting
Learn More |
||
|
|
||