China developed new bio-foam to help separate oil and water

China has developed a new biological polypropylene foam that makes oil and water separation more effective, which can be used to prevent and control oil pollution.

Oil stains in 2010 in Dalian (China) stretched over at least 183km ^{2 of} water.(Image source: ft.com).

Thanks to the rugged surface and hollow tubular structure like honeycomb, this bio-polypropylene foam is more effective at absorbing and filtering.

When the oil-water mixture passes through polypropylene foam, pure water can quickly penetrate, and the foam absorbs oil in seconds. Polymeric foam is easy to fabricate, is cheap and environmentally friendly, thus has a high application potential for oil and water separation on a large scale.

The team submitted a patent for this new technology. The study was published in the Journal of Chemical Engineering.

Oil and water separation is a global challenge because of the increase in the amount of industrial oil waste and oil spills. Therefore, research on materials and technology to help the oil and water separation achieve high efficiency has scientific meaning and application value.

Some common methods to overcome oil pollution, such as burning and refining of oil, have many limitations such as energy consumption, long time and can lead to secondary pollution.