Oil spills suck.
Some of them gush millions of barrels worth
of oil into the ocean.
How do you even clean up a mess like that?
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews
On April 20th 2010 an oil rig in the Gulf
of Mexico exploded, spewing thousands of barrels
of oil into the coastal waters a day.
The pipe was finally capped 87 days later.
5 years later, 2-16 percent, or possibly more,
of the oil still lays on the ocean floor.
Scientists are still assessing the damage
to ecosystems and the people who live there.
So how do spills like that get cleaned up?
What happens to the all that oil?
The first step, contain the spill.
Oil is insoluble so it doesn’t mix with
water.
Instead it floats on top in a layer just a
few centimeters thick.
Temporary floating barriers called booms corral
the oil.
Above the surface the barriers look like a
string of floating body pillows, circling
the oil.
Below the surface they have a little “skirt”
of material that extends a few feet to catch
any oil below.
Once the oil’s rounded up, it can be scooped
up with skimmers, kind of like what you might
use to get bugs out of a pool.
If that doesn’t work so well, dispersants,
or chemical emulsifiers can be sprayed.
Some dispersants contain
surfactants, the stuff that makes detergents
clean your clothes.
They break up the oil and other dirt because
their molecules have opposite ends.
One end is hydrophilic, mean it likes water
and the other is oleophilic, meaning it likes
oil.
These break up the surface tension that stops
water and oil from mixing.
By breaking up the oil, it makes the oil disperse
more easily into the water.
Which could keep the oil from reaching the
shoreline and damaging fragile wetland ecosystems.
But some research shows that dispersants are
toxic to coral, so maybe dispersants aren’t
the best idea for every spill.
What other tools do we have?
Absorbents, like clay and straw soak up some
of a spill but they also soak up a lot of
water.
So they’re not ideal.
Fortunately, science is on the case!
Researchers from a Swiss materials research
institute called Empa have developed a kind
of sponge made of chemically modified wood,
called
Nanofibrillated Cellulose.
The material soaks up oil but leaves water
behind, and in lab tests they’re said to
have absorbed up to 50 times their own weight
of oil.
Another really cool engineered sponge was
recently created by Ohio State University
scientists.
The nature-inspired technology is described
in a paper published in the journal Scientific
Reports.
Inspired by lotus leaves, the stainless steel
mesh is coated with silica to create a bumpy
exterior.
On top of that bumpy layer is another layer
of surfactant.
And finally it’s sealed with a polymer coating
that repels water.
One of the researchers says that a combination
of these layers makes for nano-particles that
bind to oil.
They’re hoping the mesh could one day be
used like a giant spongesoaking up a nasty
oil spill.
Both of these technologies are still in the
early development phase though, so it may
be a while before they’re put to use in
real disasters.
As for the oil that washes up on shore, Sometimes
nature can take over, sometimes with a little
help.
Biological agents like, enzymes or microorganisms,
can be added to help speed up the biodegradation
process.
According to the EPA this can either involve
“bioaugmentation, where bacteria is added
to the spill site to help biodegrate the oil
or
biostimulation, where nutrients are added
to already present oil degraders to stimulate
growth.
So while oil spills can be pretty nasty, scientists
are always looking for new and better solutions
to cleaning them up.
Another solution might be more environmentally
friendly cars!
Speaking of, the new Toyota Mirai is looking
to the future with sustainability in mind;
fueled by hydrogen and leaving zero emissions
behind.
To learn more how we get oil out of the ground,
check out this great video from Trace, where
he explains where all our oil comes from.
