The water around Vancouver Island has twice been polluted by oil spills this week. Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the latest spill likely isn’t recoverable.
Authorities in Taiwan are rushing to clean up a spill near Green Island in the Pacific. They’ll likely skim the oil off the surface or use booms to contain the slick.
U.S.-based researchers have another method, however. Scientists at the University of Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory have developed foam they call the ‘Oleo Sponge.’ It can soak up about 90 times its own weight in oil before being wrung out and used again.
A senior chemist at Argonne, Jeff Elam, says the reusability of their foam isn’t its only breakthrough.
“Oleo Sponge can clean up subsurface oil, that is to say oil in the form of tiny droplets that remain suspended below the surface,” Elam said. “As far as we know, there is no other product that can do this.”
Elam said cleaning up subsurface oil was a specific request from the U.S. Coast Guard, which is funding the project.
When Deepwater Horizon failed in 2010, hundreds of millions of litres of oil spilled into the water and a lot of it didn’t collect on the surface.
In a report following the spill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the subsurface oil affected marine life in a huge swath of the Gulf of Mexico.
“In the past, subsurface oil has been largely ignored,” Elam said. “But the environmental effects can be devastating.”
Elam said Argonne’s technology is ready for licensing and the team is researching other uses for the sponge’s selective coating.
Argonne National Laboratory is part of the University of Chicago, conducting research for the U.S. Department of Energy.
