Cleaning Up

When a major oil spill takes place at sea, a whole army of experts and volunteers mobilizes to clean things up. The teams use several techniques to soak up the oil, suck it up, or even gobble it up. And in a few years, they may be able to add one more weapon to their arsenal: a type of net that captures the oil but allows water to flow right through.

A major oil spill can create major environmental problems. It kills organisms in the water and on shore, and its effects can last for years. And no matter how massive the response, it takes time to clean things up — and a lot of the oil gets away. So scientists and engineers are always looking for ways to improve the response.

Engineers at The Ohio State University, for example, recently developed a type of netting that could make it easier to skim oil from the surface. The researchers were inspired in part by the lotus leaf, which has a bumpy surface that repels water but traps oil. The researchers created their own bumpy surface, which has more area than a flat one, by coating a mesh of stainless steel wires with particles of silica, which are like tiny grains of sand. They then coated that layer with a polymer embedded with particles of the cleaning agent found in soap and detergents.

In laboratory tests, this mesh let water flow right through, but trapped the oil. So the researchers hope that one day, large nets made from this type of mesh might help skim oil from the surface of the sea — adding one more weapon for oil-spill clean-up crews.