Researchers create new fabric to help mop up oil spills

BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico proved to be one of the world’s worst oil spills in history. The oil rig explosion killed 11 people and dumped an estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil into the surrounding ocean. Over the past six years, news of the spill has calmed down but researchers are still discovering just how devastating the event was, especially for baby dolphins.

Now, a team of Australian researchers from Queensland University of Technology might have found a better way of cleaning up oil spills before they destroy an entire ecosystem. The new fabric, that attracts oil and repels water, is covered in a layer of tiny nanostructures that look like rods. These ultra-small, semi-conducting rods on the fabric’s surface allow water to run through them while trapping oils and pollutants.

The researchers said that the process they used to make the fabric is a simple one. “We took commercially available nylon that already had a seed layer of silver woven into it which makes it easier to carry out the next part of the process – addition of the copper. We then dipped this fabric into a vat where a copper layer was electrochemically deposited onto it. Now with a copper coating, we converted the fabric into a semiconducting material with the addition of another solution that causes nanostructures to grow on the fabric’s surface – the key to its enhanced properties,” explains Anthony O’Mullane, a materials chemistry researcher.

The fabric also has antibacterial properties and decontamination properties because of the copper used in its manufacture. This makes it the perfect device for cleaning water supplies in remote villages along with the oceans.It can also degrade organic pollutants using visible light because it is semi-conducting.

The fabric is now undergoing tests to ensure that the rods can hold up after continued use. The next step is for the team to scale up the fabric to make it viable for large, Deepwater Horizon-scale spills. They haven’t given a timeframe for this stage of testing, but hopefully it’ll be ready for when the world needs it.

The team’s full report has been published in ChemPlusChem.

Source:  Science Alert