Scientist’s have developed a genius solution to the disturbing ink and petroleum spills inside the waters of the oceans, seas, rivers, and even likes.
The new kind of sponge that sucks up oil and petroleum – based chemicals with ease works under the water, and on the surface.
A single panel of sponge sucks up to 1.4 gallons of oil.
The sponge was invented by researchers at Argonne National Lab, and they calim that the sponge could be cleaning up spills within five years.
According to the scientists who came up with the idea, both the sponge and the oil are reusable.
The modified foam can soak up oil floating on water and lurking below the surface, and then can be repeatedly wrung out and reused, the researchers say.
Close to 1.4 million gallons of petroleum are spilled into the oceans annually
It “just bounces back like a kitchen sponge,” said co-inventor Seth Darling, a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
Other oil spill sponges are already on the market, and modifying polyurethane foam for this purpose is not a new idea. But the Argonne researchers used a new procedure to coat the foam with a material that attracts oil but not water.
Darling and colleagues recently published a preliminary description of the foam’s performance in a laboratory. Experts who examined that paper said it’s hard to tell how well it would work in real-world settings, but that it appears suitable for making it in large quantities.