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The researchers also found that the membrane can separate nearly identical solvents; when dipped into a mixture of benzene and toluene, the membrane absorbs only the toluene. "That's pretty amazing, because they're quite similar molecules," says Joerg Lahann, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Michigan. This property could open up other applications, such as purifying or separating chemicals and solvents.
Researchers hope that the nanomembrane could reduce waste and lower the cost of cleaning oil spills from boats and in the petroleum industry. But Doug Helton, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says that it might be too early to say whether the nanomembrane might be practical in cleaning up large oil spills. The heating technique needed to clean the membrane might prove "a fairly onerous process," he says.
Plus, the membrane's oil-sopping capacity might diminish at a real spill. "Oil spills are pretty messy," Helton says. "There might be a lot of debris. That might reduce the efficiency of the sorbent." For now, Helton thinks the membrane could be good for removing water contaminants at factories or cleaning up smaller oil spills--in garages and machine shops.
Safety upgrades are critical but could mean higher prices for oil and gas.
But BP's "top kill" method to stanch the spill could also break it wide open.
The disaster exposes overreliance on blowout preventers that has been long disparaged by insiders.
Is bioremediation not a workable solution?
It might seem off-topic as the approach is different, however I believe that since the overall problem that we are trying to solve is the same, wanted to add my 2 cents. I wanted to bring out the benefits of bioremediation process.
Regarding bioremediation, when implemented right, can cleanup oil spills effectively and in our experience at Sarva Bio Remed, with confidence. I can say that in the last 8 years our company has been involved in cleaning up some heavily contaminated sites with TPH ranging from 700,000 ppm to 70,000 ppm to less than 200 ppm within 3 - 4 weeks for soil and spills on water usually took similar time. I tend to agree with Doug Helton in the article that oil spill cleanup become messy using sorbent pad based approaches and also adds to the cost of cleanup, more so in the US where USCG estimates the costs of cleanup to be about $500 USD per gallon of oil spilled. In our experience the reason we have achieved the success is the near zero maintenance and also the consistency of the success of our approach. The solution we offer is cost-effective to about $10 per gallon of oil spilled. Since our products are commercially available, my post could be considered shameless commerce. OTOH, if the reporter had done some additional research, we would have come up in a simple google search and then I would not have to make this post(;-)). My post is also presented in this forum as self-interest as the total dollars allocated in solving the existing oil due to past spills and to address future(however much we would like to wish otherwise) is limited therefore competing technologies need to sort out the best approach as it is the tax dollars that somehow get diverted into oil spill cleanup as many polluters somehow were able to limit their liability for any oil spill. As a recent example, the COSCO Busan spill cost the polluter about 50M USD for 50,000 gallons of oil spill: about $1000 per gallon of spilled oil. We have been trying to work with environment agencies to help outline the benefits of a working bioremediation solution (such as ours) of course its a slow process and the baggage bioremediation carries is quite significant to overcome. Thanks for the post, this keeps the problem alive and hope someone is willing to solve the problem soon and put some weight behind a working solution. I am sure a lot of the information is common knowledge and I was using the numbers to present the viability of a solution and the target end-points for a successful approach. If the reporter of this article needs to contact me, please feel free to email me.
Thanks,
Dinkar
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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flared0ne
395 Comments
Some interesting opportunities this opens up...
Imagine a relatively narrow (12 inches, say) "ribbon" of this material, in something approximating a continuous loop, going "out" or "down" to a spill, a seep, a source of hydrocarbons that wants to be transported/cleaned-up/captured. After spending some minimal amount of time "in contact with" the target hydrocarbons, it spools on "back" or "up" to a stratified cracking sleeve that sequences up in temperature as the "ribbon" travels through, gasifying various compounds off of the "sponge".
Given varying required "dwell-times" at various temperatures, a constantly moving "belt" might warrant folding to stay within some thermal ranges long enough.
Possibly more efficient than a "closed loop" approximation might be a pair of "feed" and "uptake" spools, where you plan to "cook off" and recover the scavenged material after you acquire some cost-effective number of takeup spools that justify heating up the recovery oven.
Might be feasible to improve productivity of some slow-producing oil strata, depending on sufficient contact area "down-hole"...
And if the solvent selectivity can be engineered via pore-size manipulation, for example (similar to zeolite-catalyst engineering, I imagine), a whole new range of catalytic options should become feasible.
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flared0ne
395 Comments
Re: Some interesting opportunities this opens up...
I don't recall hearing any description of the thermal conductivity of this type of material... Something to look up.
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Brian H
60 Comments
Re: Some interesting opportunities this opens up...
Very smart! I wonder if tubes of the material might be used for purification; suck up contaminated water at one end, pump purified out the other. External systems like you describe might contact the pipes and draw off accumulated oil as fast as it built up in the pipe walls.
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