They call it “magnetic boron nitride (MBN)” but what a team of engineering researchers at the University of Calgary has developed, to put it simply, is a super sponge for soaking up aquatic oil spills.
Not only does the non-toxic biodegradable material, consisting of magnetic nanostructured white graphene, absorb crude oil at up to 53 times its own weight, it can also be reused over and over. And unlike traditional clean-up technologies, the groundbreaking nanomaterial allows for salvage of spilled oil.
“The current technologies for oil spill cleanup only focus on impact mitigation and ignore crude oil recovery,” explains Dr. Nashaat Nassar, PhD, an associate professor at the Schulich School of Engineering.
“There is a need for an innovative technology to generate a high-performance material that can be used to both clean water and recover crude oil for further use after a crude oil spill.”
Continue reading at University of Calgary.
Image via University of Calgary.