Blocking oil spill disaster with magnets

Scientists in the US have found a way to extract oil from water with magnets, a simple, quick and economical technique.

Spill oil can cause terrible impacts on marine ecosystems. Therefore, the effort to minimize the damage in the oil spill incident is extremely important.

Measures to treat oil spills include: biological treatment, oil burning on the sea, use of oil decomposers and oil removal. However, methods often take a long time (can take several weeks) and are very expensive. So researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a technique for separating oil and water by magnetic methods and this technique can be used to clean up oil slicks, ENN reported.

Disaster spill in Mexico

The new technique will help collect oil and bring it to a refinery for recycling. Markus Zahn, a professor at MIT, said: 'After the BP oil spill happened two years ago in the Gulf of Mexico, I thought that if oil was magnetized, we would be able to suck oil with a strong magnet. and separate oil from water '.

Zahn and colleagues mixed water-repellent non-metallic nanoparticles with oil and used magnets to separate the oil from the water. The nanoparticles are then removed from the oil by magnetic methods. When the oil spill occurs, most of the oil will sink and spread due to the impact of the water flow. Strong ocean waves also make it more difficult to treat oil spill because oil is dispersed and spread more. However, when humans mix magnetic nanoparticles into oil, nanoparticles adhere to oil molecules and help machines separate them from the water.

Shahriar Khushrushahi, the study's lead author, said: 'Thanks to magnets, we can remove oil from water very quickly because the magnetic attraction is much stronger than the adhesion between water and oil. We can really make this process faster and more continuous without any effort. '

The design and implementation process of this technique is quite simple. The analysis of MIT's research findings really benefits because the spill has occurred on a large scale, especially in the oceans.